New Yorker piece on cameras

the writer is probably just as much of a camera geek as most of us. he just has a taller soapbox.

what he's really saying is "camera companies, please let me upload photos directly to the internet. i will pay for a monthly data plan. pretty please with sugar on top?"
 
Thoughts like those of the writer, and thoughts like ours here, have been expressed constantly for the last 175 years, ever since that painter saw Daguerre traipsing across the landscape scooping up all the scenery 'in an instant'. Nothing new here. And we painters, photographers, and (whatever you call someone making an image with a phone) are, in the end, left with the same thought: its about the art of seeing. All the rest is just mechanics. :)
 
Whipping a Dead Horse

Whipping a Dead Horse

You know, the truth is that the damage the cell phone has wreaked on the camera industry is already largely done. Everyone is just writing about the horse that has already left the barn. Just look at the sales figure, it really doesn't take a genius to see that cell phone cameras are causing problems.

But things are changing so quickly in our world that the next big thing is just now arriving and will probably begin wreaking havoc with handheld cell phones in just a couple years. For all we know in two years we will all be wearing the Apple 7G on our wrists, kind of like Dick Tracy although a heck of a lot more stylish than what he packed around.

Figure it out. Digital cameras were becoming the in thing just after Y2K. As for cell phones, I was using a cell phone to take pictures that were good enough for auditing 4 years ago. Who knows what is coming next, predicting the future is notoriously difficult. But all this cell phone malarkey is just whipping a dead horse. The damage has already been done.
 
I wish I had written that article, because had I done so, I would have written it with a view to scaring you all into 'off loading' all your gear and thus flooding the market and then I would buy the lot and flog it back to you at a gooood price ;)
 
Keith said:
That article doesn't warrant the attention it's getting here IMO ... it's just some airhead's opinion and means very little.
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True, but the article is a wonderful springboard for us to launch our own opinons, counterpoints, jokes, quips, on whatever angle of it that we choose . . . and that right there makes it a good read :D:D


"Phonies" ? . . . I love it !!!
 
L Collins said:
The article is the functional equivalent of saying the novel is dead because we can now send email.
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Not killed the novel, but email has all but killed the postal service. Nooks, iPads, etc., are killing the printed book.
 
Ranchu said:
Sontag didn't know anything (I mean anything) about photography so quoting her at the end is kind of funny.
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Are you kidding? (honest question)

Sontag may have ignored how to hold a camera (I don't know, it doesn't matter), but she analyzed the meanings of photography and the photographic act in a very sensible way.
She understood Photography better than most photographers (or picture makers) do.
 
While it was nice to see my housemate's Instagram photo last week of a double rainbow over Macchu Pichu, I likely won't be using my cameraphone much on my vacation next week. I won't even be using a digital - the M4 and Rolleiflex are too enjoyable to pass up for me, especially on vacation. To each his own, I suppose...
 
rodinal said:
Are you kidding? (honest question)

Sontag may have ignored how to hold a camera (I don't know, it doesn't matter), but she analyzed the meanings of photography and the photographic act in a very sensible way.
She understood Photography better than most photographers (or picture makers).
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No, I'm not kidding, what she did was use photography as a hook to construct a fantasy world to house her polemical wailings. You may agree with those, but they have nothing to do with photography. Really!
 
Ranchu said:
No, I'm not kidding, what she did was use photography as a hook to construct a fantasy world to house her polemical wailings. You may agree with those, but they have nothing to do with photography. Really!
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Interesting, thank you.
What reading would you recommend as a refutation of Sontag's "wailings" ?
(besides her own "Regarding the pain...")
 
So, back to the beginning then.
Sontag knew nothing about Photography, ok. You say so not because you disagree with her opinions but because... she didn't practice it...?
Who knows about Photography? Someone like Ansel Adams or more like Vilém Flusser?
 
I say so because what she says about it conflicts with my experience. I know about photography. Back to the beginning, which was this.

"what she did was use photography as a hook to construct a fantasy world to house her polemical wailings"

Do you deny it?
 
Ranchu said:
I say so because what she says about it conflicts with my experience. I know about photography. Back to the beginning, which was this.

"what she did was use photography as a hook to construct a fantasy world to house her polemical wailings"

Do you deny it?
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I'm not in position to deny the least particle of your knowledge.
Thank you for your time.
Have a good year.
:)
 
Let's face it : today, who needs the New Yorker any more ? I mean with Facebook, and all the blogs, newspapers are really obsolete... Or are they ?
 
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