"Words are dead. Here's what will replace them."

kbg32

kbg32

neo-romanticist
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http://fortune.com/2014/06/04/future-of-the-image/

"........a billion cameras were added to smartphones and tablets manufactured in 2012. All these cameras have made billions of people into photographers, able to capture and share images of anything with a basic technical proficiency. No one needs to know how a camera works. No one needs to know what an f-stop is, or how to manipulate darkroom chemicals. No one has to be a good photographer to take good photos. One only has to point, shoot, and share."
 
kbg32 said:
http://fortune.com/2014/06/04/future-of-the-image/

"........a billion cameras were added to smartphones and tablets manufactured in 2012. All these cameras have made billions of people into photographers, able to capture and share images of anything with a basic technical proficiency. No one needs to know how a camera works. No one needs to know what an f-stop is, or how to manipulate darkroom chemicals. No one has to be a good photographer to take good photos. One only has to point, shoot, and share."
Click to expand...




True ... but depressing none the less! :(
 
Pretty soon everything you are "supposed" to do will be beamed to the little electronic device.

Why think when a machine can do that for you.
 
Billions of Photos....
and I take solace in the few
that shine thru and Captivates my
Mind & Eye
 
I do not agree with the OP thread title .

QUOTE from the article :
[We’ve seen this mass shift in literacy before. Until fairly recently in history, literacy was restricted to the professionals—a small group of educated scribes and religious figures understood to be fit to translate Biblical texts and render contracts. In the 1400s, Europeans were considered literate if they could spell their names—and 80% could not. Then came the printing press. Within a century, people could read and write in growing numbers, and the literate were able to express complex ideas in writing. This mass shift in literacy ushered in progress in science, general education, and the arts. We are now entering a similar period for images. Our smartphones and the Internet that enables them are the modern-day equivalent to movable type, and these tools are still very new.]

Other than progress in literacy which was the basis for scientific progress because you had to be able to understand an abstract idea and built on it.

There is not much intellectual capacity required to snap and share these billions of pictures that have contents that is irrelevant a week or even a day later in 99% of all shots. Everyone can snap a picture, that's equivalent to put a stamp on a piece of paper - you can't necessarily write.

No, words are NOT dead, despite a gazillion of pictures shared every day.
 
"Pathetic fallacy".
Just a sentence I wrote by using of iPhone.
OP, could you, please, replace quoted words with images from mobile phone camera?
 
icebear said:
I do not agree with the OP thread title .

QUOTE from the article :
[We’ve seen this mass shift in literacy before. Until fairly recently in history, literacy was restricted to the professionals—a small group of educated scribes and religious figures understood to be fit to translate Biblical texts and render contracts. In the 1400s, Europeans were considered literate if they could spell their names—and 80% could not. Then came the printing press. Within a century, people could read and write in growing numbers, and the literate were able to express complex ideas in writing. This mass shift in literacy ushered in progress in science, general education, and the arts. We are now entering a similar period for images. Our smartphones and the Internet that enables them are the modern-day equivalent to movable type, and these tools are still very new.]

Other than progress in literacy which was the basis for scientific progress because you had to be able to understand an abstract idea and built on it.

There is not much intellectual capacity required to snap and share these billions of pictures that have contents that is irrelevant a week or even a day later in 99% of all shots. Everyone can snap a picture, that's equivalent to put a stamp on a piece of paper - you can't necessarily write.

No, words are NOT dead, despite a gazillion of pictures shared every day.
Click to expand...
Dear Klaus,

Quite. And as GNS said, where is the picture that can replace the (extremely poor) argument you quote? Is it a kitten?Or a coffee cup? Or (going for the intellectually challenging stuff here) a selfie?

As for the stamp analogy, I'd just add that now there are self-sticking stamps, you don't need to know which end of your digestive tract is equipped with a tongue. It's at least as compelling an argument as any in the paragraph you quote.

Cheers,

R.
 
Hey, she's made a large claim about what she's going to do:
For the most part, these photos are not designed to document an occasion. They have become a visual shorthand that is at once more emotionally resonant and more efficient than the words I might once have used to express the same ideas. This shift in the nature of communications will have a substantial effect on culture, business, and politics. It’s already reshaping entire industries from advertising to journalism to fashion. It’s powering political campaigns and will help decide elections. It’s changing the American approach to foreign diplomacy. It’s redefining art and our relationship with the cultural institutions that embody it.

Those who embrace this shift early have the opportunity to amass influence in their fields and gain power among their peers. How, you ask? Read on. In this month’s series, Picture This, I plan to chronicle the stories of the people and businesses enabling and evolving new forms of visual literacy.
Click to expand...
While I confess myself doubtful, let's see what she comes up with. After all, if she's right I'd back most of us here to be on track to "amass influence" and "gain power". It's a shame that I suspect she isn't, well, right...

...Mike
 
"The Photographer's eye" pg6

"The Photographer's eye" pg6

"The dry plate spawned the hand camera and the snapshot. in 1893, an English writer complained that the new situation had
"created an army of photographers who run rampant over the globe, photographing objects of all sorts, sizes, and shapes, under almost every condition, without ever pausing to ask themselves, is this artistic? "
 
Frankly, that's a pretty dumb statement.

In the later film days there were plenty of people who only used cheapo throwaway bodies and processed at the local drugstore. There were plenty of people with little to no knowledge of processing, f-stops, lens focal lengths and such. But did they make good photos? Generally, no.

Digital is no easier. I started using Photoshop in CS2. To this day, I still regularly learn things about digital processing, how to do something easier or achieve the desired results. Even if you are only showing your work on the internet, you need at least a halfways decent camera, a screen with enough color space for online display, the software and the technical know-how to make digital photos look good. You need to know what white balance, sharpening, saturation is.

I talk to people all day long in other forums who want to get into photography. They pay for a camera, a few lenses, a flash and a copy of Lightroom, and immediately consider themselves photographers. Well, a brush doesn't make you a good painter, you have to learn your tools by using them, and digital hasn't changed this.
 
icebear said:
I do not agree with the OP thread title .

QUOTE from the article :
[We’ve seen this mass shift in literacy before. Until fairly recently in history, literacy was restricted to the professionals—a small group of educated scribes and religious figures understood to be fit to translate Biblical texts and render contracts. In the 1400s, Europeans were considered literate if they could spell their names—and 80% could not. Then came the printing press. Within a century, people could read and write in growing numbers, and the literate were able to express complex ideas in writing. This mass shift in literacy ushered in progress in science, general education, and the arts. We are now entering a similar period for images. Our smartphones and the Internet that enables them are the modern-day equivalent to movable type, and these tools are still very new.]

Other than progress in literacy which was the basis for scientific progress because you had to be able to understand an abstract idea and built on it.

There is not much intellectual capacity required to snap and share these billions of pictures that have contents that is irrelevant a week or even a day later in 99% of all shots. Everyone can snap a picture, that's equivalent to put a stamp on a piece of paper - you can't necessarily write.

No, words are NOT dead, despite a gazillion of pictures shared every day.
Click to expand...

The opening quote is the title of the article taken from Fortune Magazine. The words are not mine. We are now entering the stone age cave painting era of our new millennium.

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

- Albert Einstein
 
Also, even the cheapest instant film camera has the ability to make better images compared to a phone. The "sensor" is infinitely larger, with greater dynamic range, and the lens is also likely to be better. But throwing the technical issues aside, the skills you need to create good photos with your phone is no less than those you need to use the film camera. Maybe even more, considering the limitations of tiny sensors and bad ergonomics.

So why has digital made photography easier? It's made recording one's life easier, but just doing that doesn't amount to photography.
 
Forbes is full of dumb statements -- if you want proof look no further than Steve Forbes' publisher's statement regarding corporate profits and minimum wage in the current issue.

As for all those billions taking "good" photos -- well we've all seen some of those photos and I doubt the word good would apply to many. If they were so good, then Forbes would just yank any yahoo off the street and hand them a phone for their own editorial photos instead of hiring professional photographers. So before Forbes spout more of their empty fluff, they should put their cameras where their eyes are.

Here's an applicable analogy: Billions of people have stoves, and yet few are good chefs. And if so many people have stoves, why are there so many restaurants? Steve Forbes assessment of photography is as flat as his flat tax. So there! :)
 
Here's another quote:

"You Press the button, we do the rest"

This popularisation of photography leads to a cheapening of our artform.

Oh - that slogan was from 1888, btw.
 
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