Wim Wenders: Phones Have Made Photography ‘More Dead Than Ever’

[robert blu]

A small minority thinks otherwise but even Museum curators have discovered the snapshot as an art form.

Snapshots are not art form themselves, they become art form when a curator goes through them and assemble them in a body of work, which represent the way photography is conceived by a majority od people.

A few years ago some of these exposition were present in Arles. I enjoyed (not so much) the exposition but ani single snaps was just a snap !

robert

 

[Highway 61]

It's the way the tool is used. Therefore a minimum of thinking before taking the shot was normal, is it worthwhile to take this? Maybe it's not art but good for the family album.

From what I remember, most of people using Instamatic cameras or 110 cameras or Polaroid cameras when I was a kid didn't really have that "minimum of thinking". At family or business parties when everyone had got a bit drunk the Polaroid cameras or their Kodak siblings fired like thunder.

Of course we cannot see those pictures any longer now so we have that feeling they weren't that numerous, but they were. The proliferation of images existed before the social networks and the smartphones.

As for family albums : there were family albums and family albums... from something really good to something plain ugly.

On the other hand, how many great photos haven't been taken - and how many beautiful things have been lost in the nirvana forever - because people felt reluctant to "waste film" ane never pressed the shutter button ?

On the third hand 😉, people who tell about the proliferation of images now seem to make images proliferate too :

https://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=165813

😀 😉

 

[robert blu]

It’s nice to have different points of view and to be able to express them 🙂

Family albums are always interesting, when I go through my father’s in law album, the photos taken with a basic 127 camera tell a story, the family story which makes them interesting.

robert

 

[PKR]

From Mike Johnson at TOP, this morning..

"I assume most people around here are visual, and like visual representations of information. I know I do. You might be interested in a recent infographic at NYT—it creates a bucket for Apple's trillion-dollar net worth and then drops in various combinations of various companies until it's full. It's very interesting to see visually the relative sizes of all sorts of companies, well-known and little-known. I searched in vain for camera companies, although that doesn't mean they're not in there. Maybe they weren't big enough to be useful. I am definitely not schooled in business or qualified to write about it, but as near as I can tell, I believe the total global digital camera market revenue is about US$20 billion, or roughly 1/50th the size of Apple.
That 50X behemoth is squatting pretty heavily on the camera industry. As one analysis puts it, mildly, "The global digital camera market is negatively influenced by the availability of superior camera functions on smartphones." (And then adds, rather startlingly: "apart from this, minimal customer engagement by the camera manufacturers and complex specifications have diminished the growth prospects of the market." But that's another discussion for another post.) I've always been curious about what's going to kill TOP, and it appears it might be something simple: I can't sell iPhones. If that's it, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles."

More
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2018/08/good-company.html

 

[jsrockit]

More
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2018/08/good-company.html

Thanks for that... I hadn't seen it.

 

[Steve M.]

"If you tell them you have no idea, since you are paying for the privilege to not be the chef, and just ask them to “just make it like the picture”, they will stand there till hell freezes over until you tell them what ingredients you want in the sandwich".

Larry, some people have food allergies. They need to know exactly what is in food due to medical conditions.

 

[Steve M.]

I honestly do not see where a photo needs to be carefully thought out and well crafted to qualify as being something we would call a photograph. If it looks like a duck, etc, regardless of what it was taken with or how it was taken.

I made the following image of my girlfriend June w/ a smart phone, and it was spur of the moment with natural light from a small window. Not posed at all. It's as good a portrait as I have ever taken regardless of the equipment.

The other shot below was taken w/ the same phone when I was fooling around with it and accidentally took a photograph, and that's what it was, a photograph, of my rumpled bed sheets, a pair of shorts (top left corner), and my leg (bottom right corner). I did nothing but change the hues in photoshop, and made several versions of the shot. Here's two. I love the image, as does everyone I have shown it to, and my plan is to turn it into a large painting and do a series of them in different hues and sizes.

The last link is of a large charcoal drawing I made of June from a photo that I took......on my smart phone. I like the phone, and it takes pretty nice photos. It's not about the tool, it's about the image.

Many years ago a realistic artist named Franz Kline was using a projector to throw up a little line drawing onto his canvas so he could make a painting from it, and accidentally projected just a teeny corner of his sketch. He was so intrigued by it that he gave up realism on the spot and became one of the legendary leaders of the American Abstract Expressionist movement. Inspiration comes in a flash and cannot be premeditated or planned out. Or, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Emerson.

 

[Oscuro]

Two things, Darlings,

1. Bravo, Steve M. Bravo!
2. I wish Nikon would hire from Apple the person who designs the JPG engine for the iPhone.

Ciao!
S

 

[David Hughes]

Now here's a funny thing; years ago (mid 90's) when APS appeared it made photography easier for lots of people who had not considered buying a camera because of the mystic etc round them.

Some of the APS cameras were brilliant; the Contax Tix, Rollei Nano etc but no one threw away their Leica and gave up photography in disgust; it didn't happen in the 80's either when the Olympus XA appeared. Nor in the 70's when the ................ (fill in as appropriate) appeared.

So why all the fuss now?

Regards, David

 

[Larry Cloetta]

"If you tell them you have no idea, since you are paying for the privilege to not be the chef, and just ask them to “just make it like the picture”, they will stand there till hell freezes over until you tell them what ingredients you want in the sandwich".

Larry, some people have food allergies. They need to know exactly what is in food due to medical conditions.

Subway does not act this way because of food allergies. Just ask an employee why. I have. People with known food allergies order accordingly, no matter where they eat.

 

[Larry Cloetta]

Thread now has more views than his last movie.

 

[PKR]

Now here's a funny thing; years ago (mid 90's) when APS appeared it made photography easier for lots of people who had not considered buying a camera because of the mystic etc round them.

Some of the APS cameras were brilliant; the Contax Tix, Rollei Nano etc but no one threw away their Leica and gave up photography in disgust; it didn't happen in the 80's either when the Olympus XA appeared. Nor in the 70's when the ................ (fill in as appropriate) appeared.

So why all the fuss now?

Regards, David

David;

Again, I don't think this about the device, the camera phone, but the attitude / mind-set of the "new photographer", who often uses a camera phone to make photos.

I can remember reading, as I was sorting through years of work for archiving that, Ansel Adams said, he would be very happy if he made one good photo a month. That's twelve good ones in a year, for someone who photographed constantly. Richard Avedon said, if he made ten good photos in a year that he was happy with, that would be a good year. So, for those two notable photographers, that's about 500-600 good ones in a lifetime.

Thomas Hawk, a "new photographer" who defines himself as a great photographer, plans to "publish" one million of his best, before he's dead.

Notice any difference?

From Thomas Hawk's site:

"Henri Cartier-Bresson once said that your first 10,000 photos are your worst..."

Snip

"I would change Cartier-Bresson’s quote in the modern digital age to say that your first 100,000 photos are your worst. Maybe it really ought to be your first 1,000,000 photos are your worst."

Thomas Hawk

http://thomashawk.com/category/thomas-hawk

https://chrisguillebeau.com/the-quest-for-1-million-photos-interview-with-thomas-hawk/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/

https://500px.com/thomashawk

pkr
.

 

[teddy]

A small minority thinks otherwise but even Museum curators have discovered the snapshot as an art form.

The small minority is that 0.001 percent. And 0.0001 percent of these artistic people get to make a curated piece of works. I have seen some great iPhone photographers that make my photography a shame - but these are exceptional people - I think anyway.

 

[teddy]

I'm thinking of inviting the group of the most radical over to the studio, to watch me set fire to a bunch of old chromes and negatives.

pkr

Wow PKR, this is a radical move. But I have felt like this sometimes. It's part of that artistic character in a person. Seems like you are one of those. But like someone said on this thread - we must learn to live with it... This - democratisation of photography...
... What's that quote from that movie... "Do not go gentle into that good night; Old age should burn and rave at close of day. ..." "... Do not go gentle into that good night..."

 

[teddy]

...we cannot stop the trend but we can learn to live with it. And trying to make better photo to differentiate.

robert

I like this Robert, thanks for the heads up.

 

[David Hughes]

David;

Again, I don't think this about the device, the camera phone, but the attitude / mind-set of the "new photographer", who often uses a camera phone to make photos...

Hi,

I don't think it either; I don't think the equipment used has much to do with it and I don't care how many million or billion photographers there are out there. I shall go on making my photos the way I always have and ignoring them.

But, I do think that all those 'phones will make a few people wonder if there's a better or easier way of doing it and they might just come over to a digital camera for the advantages or challenge.

As for the mindset, I think the eye for the picture is important and the rest is lack of it.

Regards, David

 

[PKR]

Wow PKR, this is a radical move. But I have felt like this sometimes. It's part of that artistic character in a person. Seems like you are one of those. But like someone said on this thread - we must learn to live with it... This - democratisation of photography...
... What's that quote from that movie... "Do not go gentle into that good night; Old age should burn and rave at close of day. ..." "... Do not go gentle into that good night..."

The local photo kiddies view "democratization" as, their right to use any of my work as they please. A couple of years back, I was met with a group of photo students "demanding" access to larger files of my images, they lifted off the web. The lifted files weren't big enough to suit their needs.

"From my experience with photo students ripping my images for "class projects" ..
https://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2752341#post2752341

 

[PKR]

This Milky Way Photo Was Shot on a Phone

The Huawei P20 Pro smartphone boasts the highest-scoring smartphone camera ever evaluated by DxOMark, sitting head and shoulders above its competition with an overall score of 109. Here’s how good the on-board Leica triple-camera system is: you can shoot beautiful shots of the Milky Way in the starry night sky.
The Huawei P20 Pro smartphone boasts the highest-scoring smartphone camera ever evaluated by DxOMark, sitting head and shoulders above its competition with an overall score of 109. Here’s how good the on-board Leica triple-camera system is: you can shoot beautiful shots of the Milky Way in the starry night sky.

https://petapixel.com/2018/08/08/this-milky-way-photo-was-shot-with-a-huawei-p20-pro-smartphone/