Smartphones ruin my photography-not what you think.

Andrea Taurisano said:
What makes 99% of our street photos totally uninteresting is not so much the fact that many subjects are fiddling with a smartphone, as the fact that millions of such pictures are taken each day, and are promptly shared online.
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The people with Bresson's or Doisneau's talent today still make great photos... do not underestimate talent. I think posts like this are more of a call for the good ol days.

Bresson's or Doisneau's photos show way fewer cars and signs and no one talking on a mobile, but they would also be terribly boring if there were millions of nearly identical photos around. We're spoiled by too many cameras, more than by too many smartphones.
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Again, do not underestimate the talent of those individuals. A lot of boring photos have always been made...
 
jsrockit said:
The people with Bresson's or Doisneau's talent today still make great photos... do not underestimate talent. I think posts like this are more of a call for the good ol days.

Again, do not underestimate the talent of those individuals. A lot of boring photos have always been made...
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No doubt about the talent of many great masters of the past, though they too took lots of underwhelming photos as well as shots we now view as iconic.

And no doubt that there are great photographers today too.

It may even be that the percentage of "good shots" (whatever that means) today is just the same as in the 1950s. But the sheer amount of images we have access to nowadays, on a daily base, is of a totally different scale compared to what people had access to when they only read their local paper and Life (at best). I beleive it's more difficult to be noticed and remembered today than it was back then, no matter how good one is.
 
Andrea Taurisano said:
No doubt about the talent of many great masters of the past, though they too took lots of underwhelming photos as well as shots we now view as iconic.
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Because history remembers who did it well first... and photography has always been an activity where you make a lot to get very little of your best. Fortunately, art isn't like the olympics... nobody is keeping track of your missed attempts. The museum does not say "this is photo #12,543 of the 500,006 photos this person made."
 
Bob Michaels said:
I think that those who are bothered by too many people using cellphones in their photos have biases based on the past when such did not exist. As several posters have said, we must photograph what is and not what it used to be. Very similar to those who wished the number of cars was only what it used to be or those who find the modern era number of commercial signs in the background to be distracting. Were photographers years ago bothered by so many wearing hats? Or, today's photographers bothered by so few wearing hats? Who knows if years down the road people looking back at today's photographs will find the focus on cellphones to be interesting.
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Yeah, absolutely. Stop trying to recreate HCB with a Leica, and shoot what's in front of you with todays tools. Create something new, and of the time rather than looking to the past.

On the subject of tools, I think the phone itself is too readily discounted by a lot of street photographers who are trying to copy HCB. Being able to take a photo (or record video) with an inconspicuous device, and then instantly publish it, would blow the minds of street photographers past.

In 50 years time, people will be hailing Jeff Mermelstein's #nyc photos as a document of the times. He's shooting where the real social interaction is.
 
Ste_S said:
In 50 years time, people will be hailing Jeff Mermelstein's #nyc photos as a document of the times. He's shooting where the real social interaction is.
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Certainly a fascinating book, but it’s kind of one of those projects that can only be done once by one person and if you try to emulate it, it’s not going to work.
 
the street is, what the street is.
if you don't like it, don't shoot if a phone is evident. be patient.
but perhaps there is a book in people interacting with their phones.
oh, the mobile phone is the first leica all over again, except that just about anyone can afford the mobile "leica." yet the talent to shoot well, phone or camera, remains very, very, very rare, same as always.
in any case, 99 percent of "street" photos ae profoundly boring, whatever the device ...
 
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