Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

Post by helloworld11 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:51 AM UTC

mslate wrote: post #105

helloworld11 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to examine the visual history of street photography much better if this is the only silly summary you can come up with about generations of work done with all sorts of interesting concepts and themes. What an absurd, smarmy and parochial judgement of such a broad photographic field.

Are you a woman? Who has been snooped on by men with zoom lenses they've made in their shed?

Post by psychomugs » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 3:34 AM UTC

falcrist wrote: post #120

psychomugs wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shorter focal lengths have other purposes in street photography, where composing shots in crowded areas can be difficult or impossible with longer lenses like 85mm. 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".

Post by mslate » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

helloworld11 wrote: post #121

mslate wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a woman? Who has been snooped on by men with zoom lenses they've made in their shed?

And how exactly is that specific context relevant to the rest of my point? Is this site saturated by people with null artistic appreciation outside an obsession with highly specific criticisms of very particular things?

Post by ngokevin » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:23 AM UTC

falcrist wrote: post #119

ngokevin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's worth noting that even quite famous photographers from before the digital era would spend a LOT of time doing post-processing in the darkroom. 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.

Post by aaronbrethorst » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 5:20 AM UTC

seszett wrote: post #124

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixer is a class of chemicals used in wet photography to reduce impermanent, light-sensitive silver ions to permanent metallic silver.

That is actually done by the developer. The fixer washes away the remaining unexposed silver ions that were not reduced to metallic silver by the developer.