photography a dying art

GenussVollerei said:

My personal favorites include guys like Minor White and P.H. Donohue. Just simple images taken in good taste. No trickery or cheap manipulation.

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To my taste the first is a photographer the second a snapshooter.

Maribat said:

To my taste the first is a photographer the second a snapshooter.

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Fair assertion! I actually tend to agree. But I still enjoy his photos.

Maribat said:

To my taste the first is a photographer the second a snapshooter.

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Agreed.

GenussVollerei said:

Fair assertion! I actually tend to agree. But I still enjoy his photos.

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They're both good, but I am not that fond of. I suppose because it's a domain I am less interested in (?).

I always likes the black and white. It's like more challenging: one cannot hide behind beautiful colors. But also because I am fascinated by the rhythm of forms, in general.

Rodchenko (again !)

Rodchenko is great!

Yes, I discovered lately the "far East" photographers (Thanx, internet !)


Btw "focus" : not on the face - the theoretical strong point in a portrait ... :


Herb Snitzer

and one of my all time favourites:

André Kertész

deaf tuner said:

Btw "focus" : not on the face - the theoretical strong point in a portrait ... :

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If you're saying that "focus" is the point to which the eye naturally draws, no. "Focus" specifically refers to the plane at which a camera and lens is sharp with decreasing sharpness in front of and behind that plane. In the provided example the focus, is the line that says "depth of field."

diddyriddick said:

If you're saying that "focus" is the point to which the eye naturally draws, no. "Focus" specifically refers to the plane at which a camera and lens is sharp with decreasing sharpness in front of and behind that plane. In the provided example the focus, is the line that says "depth of field."

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By focus he meant the sharpest plane same as you pointed, not "the point to which the eye naturally draws"

diddyriddick said:

If you're saying that "focus" is the point to which the eye naturally draws, no. "Focus" specifically refers to the plane at which a camera and lens is sharp with decreasing sharpness in front of and behind that plane. In the provided example the focus, is the line that says "depth of field."

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Well, didn't want to go too far, in the first place. I am fond of photography since I was 14, I know a lot, but I am far, far, far from being a photographer, in the best case You could name me a "Sunday photographer artist" - sometimes my wife tells me how good my pictures are, but I suspect her of politeness !.

I used "focus" more in the metaphorical way, with a hint of allusion to the photographic meaning. (plus, me, writing in English ... )

This reminds me a discussion with one of the Europe's finest English interpreters-translators: I asked him, as everybody speaks (some sort of) English, if the generalized daily massacre the of English language is not hurting him.

And he answered me that it is frustrating almost all the time, sometimes physically painful. As it's quit easy to make some basic English skills, nobody goes deeper, into the extreme richness of the English language. As he put it, it's a bit like seeing a Sunday driver going every week-end to the mall driving a Lotus. A guy fiddling the only 2 chords tune he know on a Stradivari.

Just like photography: it's so easy to take a shot, that almost no one realizes how much more is in it beside pushing a button.

deaf tuner said:

Well, didn't want to go too far, in the first place. I am fond of photography since I was 14, I know a lot, but I am far, far, far from being a photographer, in the best case You could name me a "Sunday photographer artist" - sometimes my wife tells me how good my pictures are, but I suspect her of politeness !.

I used "focus" more in the metaphorical way, with a hint of allusion to the photographic meaning. (plus, me, writing in English ... )

This reminds me a discussion with one of the Europe's finest English interpreters-translators: I asked him, as everybody speaks (some sort of) English, if the generalized daily massacre the of English language is not hurting him.

And he answered me that it is frustrating almost all the time, sometimes physically painful. As it's quit easy to make some basic English skills, nobody goes deeper, into the extreme richness of the English language. As he put it, it's a bit like seeing a Sunday driver going every week-end to the mall driving a Lotus. A guy fiddling the only 2 chords tune he know on a Stradivari.

Just like photography: it's so easy to take a shot, that almost no one realizes how much more is in it beside pushing a button.

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Fair enough....It just gets a bit confusing when people are using one term for disparate things in a discussion.

diddyriddick said:

Fair enough....It just gets a bit confusing when people are using one term for disparate things in a discussion.

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I can imagine how confusing things can be: a tuner, talking photography, in English ... deaf ... in the end we'll learn he's almost blind too !

BTW, thanx yall for the extensive posts: I learned some stuff.

I think it is dying, not the art itself but people's perception of the art and all the work that goes into it.

Since fancy cameras, DSLRs have become way more affordable, so many people think all you need is a fancy camera and your pictures will be beautiful. They think that all a photographer does is point and shoot. So from what I've been gathering, many professional photographers, particulary in my area struggle to make a living from photography alone because customers aren't willing to pay what the art and time is really worth.

And by everyone having a camera phone, even people who love photography and have potential are getting lazy (ok, by "people" I mean me, lol, I've gotten lazy with it) and not taking the time to continue to be creative and advance my techniques. It's so much easier to use the camera phone and start to not care about depth of field (blurring the background or foreground was a fascination of mine).

In my opinion it is harder of course, to create something from a blank canvas using your fine motor skills. However, some of the hardest things about photography is timing and controlling the lighting of course. You have to be able to work with people or with nature's elements and use them to your advantage, plus, depending on what type of photog you are, you have to think quickly and adjust your settings and lighting and angles very quickly, a second can sometimes be the difference between the perfect shot and missing the shot completely particularly for wedding and action photographers and such.

You have to understand and respect nature...and study nature (well, my main love is nature photography and if I miss a certain shot on a particular day, it may be weeks or months before the conditions (colors, weather, what's in bloom..) are right to attempt that shot again.

It's been so long since i've gone on a photo shoot or set one up at home, but my aim is usually to tell a story. Or to evoke a certain emotion within people that they normally wouldnt feel/see without me being able to isolate a certain subject for them.

It's definitely an art because you have to have to be able to see the photos first in your head before you even press the shutter. Moving the camera just a few inches can sometimes completely change the emotion/story/concept of the photo.

It's rather become a common, popular art. Look at sites like Flickr, there are a lot of amateurs there with very decent photography (to my non-expert eyes, at least, and they're mostly not using phones).

Americanized African said:

...In my opinion it is harder of course, to create something from a blank canvas using your fine motor skills.....

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True.

But I think it's exactly why photography it's a real art, and a difficult one. You can't use Your motor skills. All You have is the reality and how You see reality. In-between is the camera. Somehow, it's so much more difficult to make that camera shot what You saw than make Your hand paint what You saw.

deaf tuner said:

True.

But I think it's exactly why photography it's a real art, and a difficult one. You can't use Your motor skills. All You have is the reality and how You see reality. In-between is the camera. Somehow, it's so much more difficult to make that camera shot what You saw than make Your hand paint what You saw.

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Oh indeed. I think the passion level and creativity has to be the same, & the person still has to be just as talented, but are just using different tools to bring their vision to life.

And learning to properly use a camera is extremely difficult, well it is to me. Many people think Auto mode is appropriate, never! LOL. You have to know when to change various camera settings. The technical side is all about science/physics/light etc...it takes lots of practice & studying to balance the technical side with the artistic side.

There is this local guy, he is so nice, he is really talented as he helped me learn to shoot in Manual Mode. He masters the technical side, camera settings, light etc, but man, creative wise, I just do not like his creative vision. Most local professional photographers in my area, I really don't like their work at all but they get a lot of clients. I'm super picky & I just don't think most people understand much about photography, even though everyone takes about 40 photos a week or something and spend all day looking at photos on social media.

Computers have trivialized the visual image..

The Alchemist said:

Photography was never art.

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Say you. Of course it can be art, especially now with numerous digital manipulation tools available to anyone and everyone. Before there was digital, photographers were massively manipulating images in the darkroom to get the effects they were looking for - dodging this, cropping that, saturating here and there. There's a big difference between documenting an image and creating the image you want others to see. Since the birth of photography, photographers have been manipulating images and there's little reason to expect that that will ever change.

BenSt said:

... they will wait to take just a few at the perfect moment using their sense to detect that perfect moment.

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I don't believe that photography is dying as an art form at all. If anything, the capacities of photographers have been greatly extended because of digital photography. Sure, there's a lot of drek out there, just like there's a lot of bad literature out there - one has to exercise judgment and separate the wheat from the chaff. Most everyday photography is used to document or to capture a moment with little artistic intent. Nothing wrong with that.

As for waiting for the right moment, most professionals will use a "burst mode' to take dozens of images to increase the likelihood of getting the best action picture. Before digital, this was done with motor drives to advance the film, but of course, film was always a finite quantity.