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Talking about what good and bad means in photography always reminds me of Miroslav Tichý, who said "if you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world", and took terrible but strangely brilliant photos with homemade cameras: https://flashbak.com/photographs-by-the-perverted-flaneur-mi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav_Tich%C3%BD
Photography as art was slightly popular in the age when regular people had crappy cameras and had to learn how to create a picture. In the process people learned to appreciate good composition and artistic interpretation of true professionals. With advancements in digital photography and recently computational exposure all of this is gone. Over-saturation, Hyper contrast, HDRI corrections are the norm. People like th…
> “We have a situation today,” Beil says, “in which our smartphone cameras are producing pictures according to the criteria of software designers, who have made a lot of egregious assumptions about the tonality of skin color.” Making any such assumption, of any quality, is egregious; it has no place in the camera application, other than as some opt-in configuration in the category of special effects.
"The less you have, the more creative you have to become."
In On Photography, Susan Sontag argued that photography, which itself took a while to become considered an art form, gradually began to absolve painting of its duty to represent 'reality.' I can see 'phonetography' doing the same: dedicated photojournalists with dedicated cameras are losing ground to amateurs with just a phone and social media account.
Painting didn't die and neither will photography, but it's definitely going through some sort of midlife existential crisis. I can see it doing the equivalent of buying a vintage roadster as a senior citizen, i.e. return to its youthful state (film and mechanical/chemical processes) and explore its own unturned stones.
Another recent example of how "bad photography" inspired "good photos" is Juergen Teller's shoot with W magazine. https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/best-performances-portfoli... The photos are typical of Juergen's style. But his style has been evolving more into casual snapshot aesthetic, but in more ironic way.
The only really interesting thing here that cameraphones have sort of pushed photography to use shorter focal lengths more often. Some photographers feel the shorter focal lengths feel "more authentic" somehow. Other than that, this looks like someone with a smartphone trying a little too hard to "do photography" yet not bothering to travel to a nicer venue.
> “We have a situation today,” Beil says, “in which our smartphone cameras are producing pictures according to the criteria of software designers, who have made a lot of egregious assumptions about the tonality of skin color.” Making any such assumption, of any quality, is egregious; it has no place in the camera application, other than as some opt-in configuration in the category of special effects.
I believe you have to make assumptions. AFAIK the data being picked up by the sensor can't map 1 to 1 with a display screen or a jpg or a print. So there has to be some mapping involved. Some cameras will give a RAW file, but developing a raw file isn't really a special effect.
Photography as art was slightly popular in the age when regular people had crappy cameras and had to learn how to create a picture. In the process people learned to appreciate good composition and artistic interpretation of true professionals. With advancements in digital photography and recently computational exposure all of this is gone. Over-saturation, Hyper contrast, HDRI corrections are the norm. People like th…
Photography as art was slightly popular in the age when regular people had crappy cameras and had to learn how to create a picture. In the process people learned to appreciate good composition and artistic interpretation of true professionals. With advancements in digital photography and recently computational exposure all of this is gone. Over-saturation, Hyper contrast, HDRI corrections are the norm. People like th…
What do HDRI and GAS stand for?
Yes the craft of photography has gone mainstream with digital. Easier to use for the average person, with filters and effects, but doesn't make the average users professionals. Mobile phone images are the new throwaway polaroid. However, the professionals with digital equipment do some incredible things.
The business of photography is more marketing than craft these days. Even professional photography is a commodity. There are some people that stretch the art of photography, but they are more digital artists than photographers. They take a lot of the creativity into the post-processing and Photoshop stage. Most professional photography these days is just right-place-right-time and tweaking in Lightroom.
I'm thinking specifically of Ansel Adams, who famously said “You don't take a photograph, you make it.”
Of course darkroom tools had to be supplemented with special techniques and filters applied at the time of exposure. Digital photography is orders of magnitude easier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only really interesting thing here that cameraphones have sort of pushed photography to use shorter focal lengths more often. Some photographers feel the shorter focal lengths feel "more authentic" somehow. Other than that, this looks like someone with a smartphone trying a little too hard to "do photography" yet not bothering to travel to a nicer venue.
I'd argue that this started earlier, with the snapshot aesthetic pioneered by street photographers like Garry Winogrand and Daido Moriyama who often used wide <28mm lenses. The human field of vision is pretty wide at 120º, which equates to a ~12mm; wider is closer to what we "authentically" see. Then there's the obvious technical limitation of always being able to digitally zoom in but never out.
In terms of which focal lengths produce perspectives that make the most sense to our eyes, people usually point towards 35-50mm lenses. Supposedly the formula is something like "focal length = diagonal measurement of the format".