Photography & iPhones

[David Hughes]

Hi,

I thought this was interesting:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/dec/13/death-of-photography-camera-phones

Regards, David

 

[Ansel]

Did 35 mmm point and shoot cameras or Polaroids destroy photography? Of course not. Same with digital.

 

[maggieo]

Did 35 mmm point and shoot cameras or Polaroids destroy photography? Of course not. Same with digital.

No, but APS sure gave it the ol' college try! 😉

 

[keytarjunkie]

Does owning a camera make you a photographer?

Does owning a pencil and paper make you a writer?

Photography has been an elitist's game since Talbot in the 1840's. Every once in a while, something comes along to wear that notion down by offering photography to a broader audience - Daguerre in the 1850's, Kodak around 1900, Polaroid in the 1950's, digital photography in the 1990's, and now smartphones and apps.

The art form of photography is not being destroyed, I think it is changing shape and growing! But don't look to instagram as the death of photography, the same way you wouldn't look at texting and emailing as the death of writing.

*Similarly, the guitar hero video game is not the death of music. Twerking is not the death of ballet and dancing.

 

[daveleo]

More internet silliness.
Every time something changes, some guy on the internet pronounces that it is now "dead".

Some people just can't accept that evolution happens, you know.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Some people just can't accept that evolution happens, you know.

I suppose that, if the creationists are right, photography is still wet plates and collodion. dSLRs are just a mass delusion. 😕

 

[rivercityrocker]

Every couple of weeks or so some brilliant journalist/social analyst writes the SAME exact article. I only had to read the first paragraph before I stopped. I already knew where it was going.

This silly notion that iPhones/cameraphones are going to take over has been being rehashed for almost 7 years since the iPhone first hit the market.

I can't believe writers are still doing this story as if nobody had ever thought of it before.

 

[shadowfox]

Some people just can't accept that evolution happens, you know.

Of course evolution happens, some people just can't accept the theory that evolution is responsible for the origin of human beings.

🙂

(Sorry going on tangent there, back to topic, yes, just another internet article, which ironically, really changed how journalism is done)

 

[Margu]

the biggest disadvantage of camera phones are that they shoot jpg.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear David,

"Photography & iPhones"

Make up your mind. Which?

Cheers,

R.

 

[Boris Stupak]

Everybody has a brain. All those dumb brains killed Einstein.

 

[Bill Clark]

Changing the stuff used to make photographs and how we view them and when we can view them. That's all.

That's a lot of change.

 

[35photo]

the biggest disadvantage of camera phones are that they shoot jpg.

That and that the sensor is the size of a fingernail..

 

[David Hughes]

Hi folks,

Strange isn't it, how so many people read different things into articles?

As for being the same old article, well, photographers tend to turn out the same old cliches when they frame a picture. So I guess we are mostly all in that club.

I read it as saying that everyone thinks they are a photographers these days and they don't know how it happens or what can be done, and it makes people lazy. Like using any P&S all the time. That's one of the reasons I keep my pre-war cameras working, I don't want to forget how to take a picture.

Regards, David

PS The grandchildren were so ashamed of me not having some proper gee whiz thingy that they gave me an iPhone. It seems to take pictures but I can't say more without looking at them on a proper screen and I've no idea how to do that. Nor do I care much...

 

[daveleo]

. . . . .

I read it as saying that everyone thinks they are a photographers these days and they don't know how it happens or what can be done, and it makes people lazy. Like using any P&S all the time. That's one of the reasons I keep my pre-war cameras working, I don't want to forget how to take a picture.
. . . ..

I understand your point, and I think my gripe was the title of the article. It's content threw out so many ideas, I bought some, didn't buy others.

I don't think cellphone cameras (I don't own one) are a threat to anything. People have for decades been showing off their snapshots as "look at this great picture I took" and believing it. Cell phones didn't create that monster.

What digital did of course was to put cameras everywhere, and the internet made them instantly share-able. That social change is significant. But nothing died or is going to die because there are cameras in cell phones.

PS . . . that photo in the article of the crowd around the Mona Lisa sent me scrambling through my files - I swore that was my picture. It isn't. And I'll bet there are a million versions of that composition out there somewhere.

 

[maggieo]

the biggest disadvantage of camera phones are that they shoot jpg.

The 645 PRO app for iOS shoots .tiff files.

 

[wolves3012]

Dear David,

"Photography & iPhones"

Make up your mind. Which?

Cheers,

R.

I take your tongue-in-cheek point here but I have actually seen some pretty good photos from an iPhone (personal opinion, of course). As someone who loathes Apple and their products that wasn't an easy thing to type, I assure you.

Being a little pedantic - as I'm rather known to be - surely a photograph is defined along the lines of any captured image? That being the case, any image-recording device makes a photograph and using it is "photography". The quality and appeal of images may be questioned, by way of subjective opinion or on technical grounds but it still remains "photography".

 

[Vics]

The strange thing for me here is the impulse to "take a picture to prove to myself and others that I was here." The first time I visited the Louvre, I was one of about five people looking at it, and it didn't occur to any of us to take its picture. It was in a kind of glass box back then. The last time I was there, in 2012, big groups of tourists were running up to the Venus de Milo, taking turns at having their picture taken with it, one at a time. None of them ever really looked at this beautiful statue, beyond a quick glance. Sad.

 

[Photo_Smith]

I've seen this too, people in the British Museum taking pictures of themselves (front camera) with the Rosetta stone on an iPad- no attempt to look at the stone just record it.
Lots of times I wonder why? I mean you can buy a postcard and not have to carry a tea tray sized camera-you know live the moment, see it with your eyes.

We are fast approaching a time where instantaneous images aren't enough you need to tweet them so all your friends can see live as it happens, then you won't have to tell them what you saw on holiday.

Communication without interaction.

 

[daveleo]

.....We are fast approaching a time where instantaneous images aren't enough you need to tweet them so all your friends can see live as it happens, then you won't have to tell them what you saw on holiday.

Communication without interaction.

Live streaming head-mounted video cameras, direct to your weblog - the next big thing !!