The Ikea Effect, or why digital is dangerous for photography

[jsrockit]

Looking at someone else photography ain't going to make you better photog, either. Just a copycat.

Of course it could make you better. It's always good to look at what came before you... and those that did it well before you. As far as copying, that's up to you if you want to do it or not.

There is no one way of doing anything in photography. What works for me might not work for you and vise versa.

 

[zuiko85]

For us poor souls who are still using 35mm half frame waiting to see the results is almost mandatory. This is why I'm experimenting with 4X5 paper negatives. If I want to I can run out, expose only one or a few DDS, and then go back to the apartment, turn on the safelight, close the bathroom door and in a few minutes see results. Not quite 'instant' but a lot quicker than 35mm. Of course, at ISO 6~12 you are not going to capture a lot of street photography or action shots but I guess you cannot have everything.

 

[edge100]

"First – learn to appreciate, that making good pictures is difficult."

Ain't that the truth.

 

[Joosep]

Film is something similar comparing to digital here. Photography as profession is getting outsourced by students and housewives equipped with something obvious.

"Every camera has "IT". Good luck to you in the land of potboilers, cheapskates and economy-clickers. In order not to get into one of the aforementioned bunch, you also must have "IT".

:angel:

 

[hepcat]

Of course it could make you better. It's always good to look at what came before you... and those that did it well before you. As far as copying, that's up to you if you want to do it or not.

There is no one way of doing anything in photography. What works for me might not work for you and vise versa.

Yes it can, but only in the sense that you begin to get a feel for what YOU like and don't like in terms of composition, lighting, and timing. There are photographers whose styles I admire greatly, and parts of whose repertoire I have borrowed when I consciously make the effort. Unless you're shooting for a client, though, if you shoot enough you develop your own style (hopefully.)

I see a number of trends I find personally disturbing that seem to be ubiquitous and for which I have personal disdain... filling the portrait frame diagonally, washed out and faded colors or single tints are two examples. Those things aren't inherently bad, but they're cliche and I just don't care for them. The criteria by which photos are judged, even in juried competitions, are often a matter of taste by the viewer rather than consistency of vision or skill at image making.

I think that art history shows us that the great practitioners may have started out emulating others, but soon tire of it and move on to develop their own vision. You've got to make your own kind of music!

 

[Paddy C]

To be frank, I think you are conflating numerous, but not necessarily connected ideas in too brief a blog post. Ideas about professionalism and amateurs, snapshots and art, etc. You start well and with a thesis but are unable to argue it effectively.

As digital photographers steadily degrade the aesthetic quality of their pictures by underappreciating the difficulty of making interesting images, and unlearning how to edit them due to excessively short feedback, on the effort scale some interesting trends emerge: landscape, stitched panorama and HDR crowd is acquiring an elite status among snappers. After all, it takes some hiking or climbing, or at least some tripod lugging and fiddling with software in order to produce these images, so they “feel” better than other kinds of shots.

Among the die hard film traditionalists, those still labouring in the darkroom are at the top, and the very peak is steadily presided by large format and wet plate fanatics. Are there any lessons to take home from that? In my opinion, certainly yes.

These two paragraphs are full to the brim with unsubstantiated opinion and obvious bias.

I think you are also making the mistake of elevating process. I see a lot of wet plate work that is completely unoriginal and uninteresting.

In the documentary "The Genius of Photography", Chuck Close states (and I'm paraphrasing): "it's easy to take a good photograph, it's difficult to take an interesting one."

What are we looking for in a photograph and what do we want?

 

[Ko.Fe.]

"Every camera has "IT". Good luck to you in the land of potboilers, cheapskates and economy-clickers. In order not to get into one of the aforementioned bunch, you also must have "IT".

:angel:

I didn't find "IT" in digital ones. But my family FED-2 has "IT" for sure.
Where is much more "IT" in the lens, not in the camera. But it depends on photog to reveal this "IT".

Of course it could make you better. It's always good to look at what came before you... and those that did it well before you. As far as copying, that's up to you if you want to do it or not.

There is no one way of doing anything in photography. What works for me might not work for you and vise versa.

No so obvious to me. I like to see others photos, but most of the time they aren't inspiring, nor educational to me in terms of creativity. Just images which are interesting to see.

EXIF was very helpful to me to find out how to, during my learning period.
Digital helps to learn how to take pictures a lot more and faster comparing to film.

 

[Monochrom]

Old plot...Old v/s New

Old plot...Old v/s New

Hi,

I think the statement you made is a little shallow and ambigous.

Taking a distance in time to better evaluate your work has nothing to do with digital or Ikea...

I can understand you don´t like PP or those infinte effects that are made very fast...and then you grant them some per se decadent aesthetic problems, but i don´t see where in the text you develop that plot or eventually prove it.

And at last you jump into 5 conclusions...

i can see you think time and large concepts like "learn to appreciate" are the key to make better pictures...but again these are statements lack a theory behind them...there u use concepts taht are hanging in the clouds like good bad old good and so.

It´s not enough to just say something and collect immediatelly the coins from the slot machine.

Check the text u made, i´ll make some simple questions.

"Among the die hard film traditionalists, those still labouring in the darkroom are at the top, and the very peak is steadily presided by large format and wet plate fanatics. Are there any lessons to take home from that? In my opinion, certainly yes."

"at the top" please, what is the top?

"the very peak" ¿?

And so the traditionalists are the ones to follow?

Was capa a traditionalist in his time?

So following fanatics is something good? do i have to learn from a fanatic?

After all i´ve read too many questions about little sub statements jump into my mind the text can´t help me to go for one road or the other.
The text just sits at the edge of the detour waving its arms in the air and saying "pick me up"


I think all this is a kind of rear guard theory that must be studied far more in order to be born!

Anyway is a very old thing. Confrontation old v/s new which is a never lasting question....

...so it´s a beginning so please go further and deeper into it.


😎

 

[willie_901]

I'm very much afraid that I disagree with pretty well everything you have written in your article.

I think you'll find that an enormous majority of people love the instant feedback of digital and are happy to do away with the wait, cost and inconvenience of film. Only a few of us oddballs actually enjoy the process for its own sake and it seems likely to me that there are fewer of us every day.

But hey! If it floats your boat, who am I to argue? :angel:

I disagree too. Digital photography does not affect human nature. The ratio of banal to originals work is not increased, instead the ratio is just easier to evaluate because more work is published. My view is the ratio of banal to original is essentially constant in all aspects of creative expression over millennia.

Digital photography might facilitate the quantity over quality problem but it does not mandate it.

In my view your post is just anther ad-hominem attack on digital photography and the effect of information technology on publishing work.

 

[jsrockit]

No so obvious to me. I like to see others photos, but most of the time they aren't inspiring, nor educational to me in terms of creativity. Just images which are interesting to see.

EXIF was very helpful to me to find out how to, during my learning period.
Digital helps to learn how to take pictures a lot more and faster comparing to film.

Oh you meant technical concerns and not composition, concepts, and content... I see.

 

[Sparrow]

Pity about that. 😎

........... 😀

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I liked the first picture in the article best.

 

[Darthfeeble]

I wonder if the early cave guys who drew on the walls with charcoal had the same feeling about that newfangled stuff called "Paint"?

 

[Pioneer]

Yes...paint belongs on people's faces. It has no archival quality and obviously cannot last on cave walls.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

In my view your post is just anther ad-hominem attack on digital photography and the effect of information technology on publishing work.

Golly!

I was intending to make the exact opposite point to the way you seem to have taken it.

If people choose to use digital rather than chemical photography, that's just fine by me. I make roughly a thousand digital images to each chemical image, so I'm certainly not going to rubbish digital.

 

[Ronald M]

I have found nothing I could do with film that I can not do with digital. Perhaps with the exception of grainy gritty images I do not appreciate anyway. It can be done in digital, but the whiners refuse to learn how, but that is off topic.

Who says editing is difficult or has to be done immediately. Well yes if there is a publishing deadline, but then film is a pain.

Take your photos, make some just ok JPEGS, put them in a folder until next month or next year. Then evaluate. Put them on a sharing website and have friends give their opinions.

When my darkroom was more active, I tried to develop film
and stop at contact sheet. Then pick the best next week or month. Normally I could never wait and just brought out the FB paper. Years later going back over the neg, I made the same decisions later as first.

One nice advantage is I can fill the monitor with a print big enough to evaluate instead of contact sheet and magnifying glass, or making enlarged contacts from 35 on a 4x5 enlarger, 4 4x5 on 8x10 all at one time. Another pain an I gave it up pretty quickly.

I will stay with digital I think for most stuff. I do like my 4x6 Zone VI and 6 lenses.

 

[kbg32]

"Technically photography has moved us forward in the sense that photography is now available to all. This has unfortunately led to a decrease in real photography education. In my generation the only way we could get into photography was by studying the classics so to speak. We only saw the work of the masters. Now a young photographer can come into photography through a Flickr group or something similar and go for a long time without ever really getting a handle on the basics in terms of who did what and when.”

- David Alan Harvey

 

[Sparrow]

"Technically photography has moved us forward in the sense that photography is now available to all. This has unfortunately led to a decrease in real photography education. In my generation the only way we could get into photography was by studying the classics so to speak. We only saw the work of the masters. Now a young photographer can come into photography through a Flickr group or something similar and go for a long time without ever really getting a handle on the basics in terms of who did what and when.”

- David Alan Harvey

... true! ... but how sour do those grapes taste eh?

 

[Ranchu]

I fail to see why many photographers feel so threatened by and fearful of digital.

Nobody is threatened, that's just in your head. It's free shooting, if we thought it was adequate we would use it.

 

[sig]

So the ikea effect is that you spend a lot of time to build an pretty average piece of furniture, but since you spend a lot of time you think it is pretty darn good?

That sounds more like me when I use film and not digital. So maybe it is film that is dangerous for photography, using too much time on the process and the workmanship, and forgetting the photograph?