Do still photographs make a difference anymore?

GSNfan said:
This revolutionary sweep in the middle east is the final nail in the still photography for PJ purposes... Shaky cellphone video image is far more gritty, realistic and believable than any still photos coming from there. I just looked at some of the images on NY website and they're sent by some of the top PJ working right now, but the photos just don't feel right. They're too contrived and gimmicky to convey any sense of whats happening there, in fact they're just plain irrelevant... Still photos seem completely an outdated concept to document what they call a cyber-revolt.

Still photography is going through a tough time and hopefully it finds a direction.
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But they're 'here today, gone tomorrow'. How much of that mobile phone footage will you remember? Whereas 'Afghan girl' and the more recent Afghan girl with her nose cut off still have the power to slam you in the gut.

Cheers,

R.
 
emraphoto said:
The folks who organized that revolution were well underway prior to that image. They had trained extensively in Europe and were prepared to continue on regardless of the image.
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Tsk, silly me . . I thought everyone knew it was run by space-aliens under their leader Elvis Presley ?
 
Roger Hicks said:
But they're 'here today, gone tomorrow'. How much of that mobile phone footage will you remember? Whereas 'Afghan girl' and the more recent Afghan girl with her nose cut off still have the power to slam you in the gut.

Cheers,

R.
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"Afghan girl" is just a pretty girl who happens to be Afghan. National Geographic has been in the very-soft-porn industry since they were showing pictures of bare-breasted jungle natives in the 1930s.

I agree with the post that PJ stills from Egypt are contrived and irrelevant. I don't think this is the stills/video format so much as a present PJ fashion that is reaching a dead end. In any case, PJ stills were for newspapers and magazines, both of which are dying out.

get_image
 
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NLewis said:
"Afghan girl" is just a pretty girl who happens to be Afghan.
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Wasn't that the point? Well, that and her expression? That she's a pretty girl caught up in a nightmare? Some of the best photojournalism is common humanity: there but for fortune go you or I, or our daughters and nieces.

Sure, there may once have been scope for teenage boys to get off on 'bare-breasted jungle natives', but even when I was in my teens, I saw a bit more to the magazine than that. I find it overrated in many ways, but National Geographic as 'soft porn' is not the easiest viewpoint to defend to an adult.

Cheers,

R.
 
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Roger Hicks said:
But they're 'here today, gone tomorrow'. How much of that mobile phone footage will you remember? Whereas 'Afghan girl' and the more recent Afghan girl with her nose cut off still have the power to slam you in the gut.

Cheers,

R.
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The Afghan Girl was just a great portrait, that is all. The second Afghan girl with the disfigured nose is far more horrifying than compelling. One could photograph any unfortunate victim of an accident or a crime and horrify people with it, this picture was no different -- and the fact that it won a press award says more about the out of touch jury than any substantial work.

Still photography is great for propaganda and pushing simplistic views down upon viewers, something that press has been doing for a long time before the internet... Fortunately the controlled medium of the images are no longer a monopoly of the established news orgs or governments. Visual media has finally become truly democratic and not to forget 'free'. In fact in a few years to charge for still news images would be laughed at.

I find this welcoming actually. I just look forward to a more settled and mature still photography medium.
 
I got a little off target in my first rant. This is what I know about still images vs moving images. It's mostly based on a lot (too much) time in art director meetings, and having put together a lot of advertising focus groups. Marshall McLuhan is required reading on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF8jej3j5vA


Humans are essentially smartish predatory animals. To such a group, which covers most animal species, a moving image is of more importance because it indicates someone or something that will either eat us, or be eaten by us. It's hard wired into us all before we're even out of the womb. It's primary survival. But w/ the increase in still and moving images today, things get filtered way down by our brains. Otherwise we'd be brought to a stand still by too much information. So a still image, if it's a good one, can still be very powerful. After all, what is a video but a rapid succession of still images? Maybe the eye doesn't catch all of the nuances, but the brain does.
 
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Still images matter all the time that people can be bothered to look at them and they do stimulate our imagination in a way that moving images do not.
Most weddings are now shot on still and movie. Most brides and grooms will tell you after one year that they treasure the stills album far more than the movie, and they never sit and watch the whole movie they just FF through to the funny bits occasionally.
Why do we still have b&w when there is colour? Why do we use film when there is digital? Why do we use pinhole when there are lenses? Etc. etc.
 
This came up at dinner last week with a couple of photographers and retired professors of photography. It comes down to a generational perspective. If you are old enough to have learned still photography as a separate entity, with all its masters and the values imbued in the still image, then you will alway be able to keep the still photograph as a separate and self-contained medium. But if you are younger the still image happens within the much broader context of new media and the blending of video and stills, then you would have a different relationship to stills and how they are used. The verdict at dinner; very short video peices will replace the still image for all intents and purposes.
 
"Short videos will replace still photos for all intents and purposes purposes?"

Ha.

I'm failing to understand the allure of 'short video pieces' other than as an agreed compromise in a discussion so everybody can enjoy their dinner. Makes no sense to me whatsoever that someone would 'look through' some short videos as either entertainment or enlightenment. How does video 'blend' with 'stills' actually? One after the other contitutes a 'blend'?

There's some good movies, beyond that video is pedestrian.
 
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DaCh said:
Still images matter all the time that people can be bothered to look at them and they do stimulate our imagination in a way that moving images do not.
Most weddings are now shot on still and movie. Most brides and grooms will tell you after one year that they treasure the stills album far more than the movie, and they never sit and watch the whole movie they just FF through to the funny bits occasionally.
Why do we still have b&w when there is colour? Why do we use film when there is digital? Why do we use pinhole when there are lenses? Etc. etc.
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Sorry but I can't read that as the white text is invisible in the black on white themes
 
Sparrow said:
Sorry but I can't read that as the white text is invisible in the black on white themes
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In defense of the "colorful texters," it seems that many people compose their message offline in Microsoft Word (for various reasons), then paste it into RFF, which usually buggers up the colour scheme.
 
antiquark said:
In defense of the "colorful texters," it seems that many people compose their message offline in Microsoft Word (for various reasons), then paste it into RFF, which usually buggers up the colour scheme.
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Yes I realise that, but if it isn't pointed out the posters would never know the implication. I wasn't criticising, but rather informing
 
Still photographs do still matter, but only color still photographs. Black and white is SOO outdated.

Sorry, but just my backhanded way of saying of course still photographs still matter.

No doubt the same questions were asked about b/w photography when color photography became commonly available.
 
What do you mean by B&W is soo outdated?

I think it completely unchanged. Such things come and go like the tide. Sure we are in a heavily 'contemporary' focused period, but that will be a phase just like all others.

lots of people are scared witless off getting off the current bandwagon for fear of being 'marginal' but the irony is that so many people so keen to stay 'up to date' are pumping out a great deal of unoriginal and uninspiring work (IMHO) in the process. Its a tough one, but there is a lot of very cool B&W work and colour work, film and digital. In some cases B&W is still very much the right medium to work in to convey things in a certain way. I don't see that ever changing.



cliffpov said:
Still photographs do still matter, but only color still photographs. Black and white is SOO outdated.

Sorry, but just my backhanded way of saying of course still photographs still matter.

No doubt the same questions were asked about b/w photography when color photography became commonly available.
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I see a lot of contradictory statements from the people who claim that it matters or it doesn't matter, by arguing that yes, it matters, but it doesn't matter, but it does, but it doesn't because something else does...

I don't think people truly understand the reason. They're just reacting because "something is now that wasn't before but you can still see it and it's important, but it isn't because something else is important, but how can it". Everything everything must fit in a nice tidy box, otherwise confusion ensues.

Which is understandable. And predictable.
 
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