[HN Gopher] Photography technology has influenced what people co...
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Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good
picture
Author : prismatic
Score : 135 points
Date : 2021-08-30 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.collectorsweekly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.collectorsweekly.com)
| chefandy wrote:
| I don't think this is a good title for the article. It probably
| generates more clicks than "how trends and technology influenced
| our perception photographs."
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed the title above to use representative
| language from the article itself.
| JALTU wrote:
| I'm no art historian, but from one point of view, good
| photography demonstrated qualities you'd find in good painting.
| Then the medium took on its own aesthetic with camera angles or
| color saturation of various films. Fast forward to today and
| between "vertical" compositions (screen orientation) and live
| photo (very short video) and let's face it, upvoting, our world
| is less about bad photos than it is about popular photos. From
| a collector's point of view, I'd think one would align with
| that more than, say, a contest winner's photo. And, an element
| of this has always been there, just not as amplified and
| dominant as it is in this social media era.
|
| @chefandy suggested a better title, and I'd agree. I'd suggest
| however that his/her title is too gentle. I'd say "How Mass
| Popularity and Tech Influenced Perception of Photography"
| because it speaks to the culturally aggregating effect of the
| Internet.
| nbzso wrote:
| 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 things
| that are easy to understand and reproduce.
|
| The next level of madness is GAS. There are thousands of
| "photographers" who are actually Technographers. Who are part of
| some "group" or brand tribe. And the taste of the tribe defines
| success.
|
| The people who are learning composition, exposure or development
| are minority. And in this age popularity contest photography is
| measured in likes, so there is no place for good photography in a
| classical sense. People have phones with AI and everybody is an
| "artist'. So be it.
|
| But some of us don't care. Some of us shoot film for experience
| and challenge. Some of us read Ansel Adams books and try to
| create meaningful work. Some of us know who is Bresson, Robert
| Capa, and countless other masters.
| https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/photographers/ And this is not
| bad thing.
|
| Let people like what they can comprehend.
| meowzero wrote:
| 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.
| jbtbfkkfmfne wrote:
| The same thing happened in fashion.
|
| High fashion is always copying what the regular unfashionable
| people on the street are wearing, in the eternal search for
| authenticity.
|
| Which is why things like bubble jackets, sweat pants, crocs and
| dad sneakers evolved from being laughed at to being very
| fashionable.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The low point for me is when people get on an airplane
| wearing track shorts. Eech.
| swiley wrote:
| I must be out of touch, those aren't fashionable and I don't
| think most people in their 20s would think they are (sure
| they wear them all the time but that's because of a rejection
| of fashion in favor of comfort.)
| jbtbfkkfmfne wrote:
| > _wear them all the time_
|
| That's kind of what fashionable means.
|
| Oxford dict:
|
| Fashionable - characteristic of, influenced by, or
| representing a current popular style
| Spivak wrote:
| Rejection of fashion in very specific trendy ways is
| fashionable right now. It's more a rejection of "runway
| inspired" trends than a rejection of fashion itself.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Haute couture is almost all nutty stuff that no normal
| person wears anyway. It's like art for art's sake, not
| clothes.
| baliex wrote:
| Is it not art to demonstrate the capability of the
| designer? And what's expected to follow is that they can
| put a great looking "regular" item together too
| meowzero wrote:
| In this current internet age, there's a lot of trends of
| fashion. There was even a trend called normcore
| (https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/what-is-normcore/) that
| rejected typical fashion trends at that time.
| kergonath wrote:
| "These things are not fashionable, they just wear them all
| the time". There is a kind of contradiction there.
| WA wrote:
| What's good about these pictures? If you released them on
| Instagram on an anonymous account, nobody would give a shit.
| cratermoon wrote:
| There's nothing good about them. They have celebrities and
| are ostensibly about "fashion", but they don't otherwise have
| anything to recommend them.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Well they were decently lit and in focus...
| cratermoon wrote:
| That used to take skill, before autofocus and digital
| cameras able to shoot at ISO 6400+ with post-processing
| to smooth out the noise. Now we're at a point where if
| the picture our phone takes is out-of-focus and too dark,
| we blame the phone.
| meowzero wrote:
| It's hard to say. But I've been a fan of Juregen Teller for a
| while. He wants to break all the "rules" of fashion
| photography and photography in general.
|
| You're right, if you post these anonymously to IG, no one
| would bat an eye. But it's published in a prominent fashion
| magazine, it's taken by the famous Juregen Teller, it
| features celebrities posing in an unflattering way, they're
| wearing the latest designer clothes, and it got a ton of
| negative attention on Twitter and other social media (all
| attention is good attention).
|
| A typical amateur won't be able to do that (they probably
| think they can). I consider his style to be real and
| "amateurish" in a deliberate way. In some ways, I feel he's
| parodying amateur photos and putting famous celebrities in
| situations that normal pros don't usually would or can. Here
| is another site that tries to describe it:
| https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/juergen-teller-w-magazine/
| WA wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying this. The link is quite interesting.
| matwood wrote:
| I didn't find the photos necessarily bad or easy to
| replicate at all. Taking pictures of people is intimate and
| challenging thing to do, especially if you don't know them
| well.
|
| I'm also not one to critique photos from a technical
| perspective, and tend to go by feel in my own and others
| photos.
| meowzero wrote:
| I'm similar. Critiquing a photo from a technical
| perspective is the low-effort way to do it. Getting a
| technically good photo is probably the easiest thing to
| do.
|
| When I was more serious into photography back in the day,
| getting a photo that can express what I wanted it to feel
| or the story I wanted to convey was much harder.
| falcrist wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| Worse, advertising photography has influenced what people
| consider good looking people.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Movies and TV have a _much_ bigger impact on this than ads.
| twic wrote:
| Talking about what good and bad means in photography always
| reminds me of Miroslav Tichy, 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
| soneca wrote:
| Funny, without context (that I am unwilling to pursue atm, just
| skipped the whole article for the photos) they just look
| terrible pictures. Period.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| I think many of them are great and it has little to do with
| the "quality" being bad.
| CabSauce wrote:
| It looks to me like the pictures may have been for his...
| uhh... own self-gratification.
| tyingq wrote:
| Had that reaction too, and it's not just us :)
|
| _" Tichy was frequently arrested for hanging around the
| local pool and snapping pictures of unsuspecting women."_
|
| https://www.howardgreenberg.com/artists/miroslav-tich
|
| Though he seems to have made quite a lot of effort in the
| handmade cameras and deliberate processing techniques.
| falcrist wrote:
| Adding context does little to change that, unfortunately.
|
| I could understand if they evoked some kind of emotions or
| served as a deconstruction of photography technique, but most
| of them just look like deliberately bad photographs to me.
|
| Then again, I'm only an amateur at photography.
| Jensson wrote:
| I'd guess they invoked nostalgia in other photographers at
| the time about their old bad photos, so they thought it was
| brilliant. Like an inside thing only they understood.
| wavefunction wrote:
| I like them and it's simply because they evoke an
| intellectual and emotional reaction. That's art.
| falcrist wrote:
| I get nothing from them. Does that make them _not_ art?
| caconym_ wrote:
| I would guess GP was trying to explain what they enjoy
| about these photographs in the context of their putative
| classification as art, not offering a definition of art
| itself. This would be in contrast with the comment they
| replied to, which implied that this photographer and his
| work are "famous" only thanks to an indulgent,
| masturbatory sort of appreciation among critics, other
| artists, and their general ilk.
| wavefunction wrote:
| For you, perhaps. I don't think there is an objective
| truth of "this is art, this is not art." I shared my
| experience of the pictures with you. Art is the
| experience of Art imo.
| jstrH wrote:
| Having seen 100s of high def birds, mountains, weddings, even
| pro photos are pretty repetitive.
|
| These say interpretive art to me more than every pixel of yet
| another nature shot, or airbrushed person. They make my
| imagination curious about the world within.
|
| When all the details are there just as they would be outside,
| why not just go outside?
| mdoms wrote:
| Yup, you can't just take awful photos and say "these are good
| actually". Well, in the art world you can get away with that
| kind of nonsense. But to most people those are just terrible
| photos.
| kergonath wrote:
| There are various philosophical and artistic movements for
| which art should not look like art. Others are about art
| being abstract, inaccessible and incomprehensible. Others
| yet are about use of archaic techniques to blend a modern
| eye with faux nostalgia (proto-hipsters, one could say).
|
| There is not one kind of art.
|
| Art does not need to be popular or broadly understood to be
| art.
|
| You are not a majority anyway.
|
| Good taste, feeling, and emotions are personal.
| dagw wrote:
| There is no contradiction between something being both a
| terrible photo (or painting or sculpture) from a technical
| perspective and art.
| pcrh wrote:
| >without context
|
| That's an effect of perspective. Knowing the fact that the
| "home made" appearance is deliberate changes the photos from
| being random bad photos to being commentary.
| markmark2021 wrote:
| So this is the worlds most famous upskirt photographer?
| deertick1 wrote:
| Kind of taken aback by all the people saying these are just
| shitty photos. I think they are gorgeous... Do y'all think Lo-
| fi music is just shitty music too?
|
| I guess its a little unsurprising coming from the usual HN
| crowd lmao.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Agreed, they are really beautiful. The bike in motion and
| dancing feet in particular
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Curious, is "more badly" here an intentional joke? Or did he
| mean "want it badly" in the sense of really wanting something?
| gowld wrote:
| It's itentional. He starts with, "First of all, you have to
| have a bad camera".
| lmilcin wrote:
| Well, I took a look, they are just bad photos to me. I could
| not find any redeeming quality.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| From the wikipedia article: "...using homemade cameras
| constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand
| materials"
|
| I mean... I don't know if I'd take perfect pictures with such
| equipment, especially not if I'm trying to do it secretly.
| lmilcin wrote:
| This is not about technical quality. They just don't look
| or have anything interesting in them.
| chakalakasp wrote:
| I'm a photographer and I'll be honest, I clicked on these
| fully expecting to not like them (usually when people say
| "look at these photos, they look like terrible photos taken
| with a bad camera until you, like, _get it_ , man" what they
| really mean is that the photographer knew the right
| pretentious people at the right time in history)...
|
| ... but I actually like them. I wish I could explain why;
| he's doing some clever stuff here. Some of it is kinda pervy
| and it feels like TMI, but he's at least being clever. There
| are a few photos that feel like you are voyeuristically
| peeking through time, the defects in the photos are like
| peeking through bushes to see something interesting. But
| mostly I can't explain why I like it. I just do.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| I'm curious, show an example of what you consider to be good
| photos, if you don't mind taking a moment.
| [deleted]
| lmilcin wrote:
| I don't think I can explain to you by showing _an_ example.
| Also, I type this on a phone and don 't have access to my
| collection.
|
| A good photo looks interesting or has something interesting
| in it or comes with some interesting context.
|
| These are more or less random photos taken with a bad
| camera. That's it.
|
| Now, I don't say you need good camera for good photos. You
| can make interesting photos with any camera. And you can
| also use bad camera for interesting effect.
|
| But, again, these photos don't show any kind of plan,
| thought, deliberation, interesting subject, context,
| technique, nothing.
| panta wrote:
| A good photo does not need to be interesting, since it
| doesn't need to appeal to intellect to be good. A photo
| can be good just by provoking an emotional reaction in
| the viewer.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > A good photo looks interesting or has something
| interesting in it or comes with some interesting context.
|
| To my eye, these photos have all three of those things.
|
| You don't have to like them yourself, but it seems a bit
| much to imply that they are objectively without value as
| art.
| kergonath wrote:
| > You don't have to like them yourself, but it seems a
| bit much to imply that they are objectively without value
| as art.
|
| There is nothing objective about art anyway.
|
| I agree with you, though. There is something in these.
| Some kind of motion. Some kind of primitive, wild
| instincts as well. As if a bear had found a camera, and
| he were more interested by ladies than about anything
| else.
| mslate wrote:
| Back when "street photography" meant snooping on unsuspecting
| women
| kebman wrote:
| The imperfections serve as a kind of verfremdungseffekt, making
| the viewer aware that he's looking at a photograph, rather than
| at a person. As such Rene Magritte comes to mind. It is
| fascinating that he made his own camera, though. That certainly
| adds to the quality of the images, though it's of course a kind
| of non-diegetic contents. He said, with a wry smile.
| stavros wrote:
| Is it just me or has the quality of GPT-3 comments declined
| recently?
| glxxyz wrote:
| I think I've used that 'homemade camera' Instagram filter.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| 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.
| ngokevin wrote:
| 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.
| ScaleneTriangle wrote:
| The example of a selfie is in fact, not a selfie.
| poetaster wrote:
| Statue selfies should become a genre ! I will contribute.
| Panini_Jones wrote:
| It's a picture of people taking a selfie. I think that
| communicates what a selfie is better than an actual selfie.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The caption says, somewhat ambiguously, "Example of a
| selfie".
|
| That could mean "this image is an example of a selfie" (which
| is false). Alternatively it could mean "this image shows an
| example of a selfie being taken" (which is true).
| [deleted]
| mc32 wrote:
| Sure but they are showing someone who we can presume completed
| taking a selfie. Though, arguably, the photographer we do not
| see, being further away would have taken a better (less
| distorted) picture, if the self photographer hadn't hogged up
| the view.
|
| In any case, I'd be curious to have joerg colberg's take on
| this. Looks like he touches upon it tangentially[1] but not
| full on.
|
| [1]https://cphmag.com/real-world/
| function_seven wrote:
| Ha. Now I want to see the photo of that one being taken.
|
| Something like this:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/cmwov/_/c0tpyls/
|
| EDIT: If you don't want to wade through that thread, here's a
| single image strip of that OP descending into madness as he
| shows how he took the "k-1" photo:
| https://i.imgur.com/Z12CC.jpg
| dheera wrote:
| I frequently see people say online that they "took a selfie of"
| something else these days. This language really bothers me.
| VonGallifrey wrote:
| I have heard that as well, but the selfie in those cases was
| them with whatever they said. So it is more a short form of
| "took a photo of me with..." which I think is OK.
| coldtea wrote:
| This points to a deep rooted problem. Probably OCD.
|
| (Ha, you expected me to write about a problem in how people
| use language, got ya :-)
| scubbo wrote:
| Or, a deeply-rooted assumption that "conformance to some
| arbitrary rules that have been adopted as signifiers of
| intelligence and class" is in some way an admirable
| quality, rather than the abilities to infer meaning in the
| face of ambiguity and to update one's mental model in
| response to new information (also known as "intelligence")
| mc32 wrote:
| I took a self-portrait of... It's people not thinking through
| what they are saying and rather relying on stock phrases to
| relay information.
| cstrahan wrote:
| > relying on stock phrases to relay information
|
| You can see this in other common phrases.
|
| Take "miles per hour" for example. I've met plenty of
| people who can't figure out how long it would take to get
| from A to B at X mph. They'll deliberate over how they know
| from running on their treadmill that they run (on average)
| at 8 mph, and they recall that it usually takes them Y
| minutes to run Z miles, and then they factor in the
| diameter of their car's wheels (because surely a car with
| larger wheels gets there faster for the same mph vs a car
| with smaller wheels), and finally sprinkle in a bit of
| multiplication to arrive at their best guestimate.
|
| That is, plenty of people don't realize that "per" means
| "for each", and that it's not some singular word
| "milesperhour", but a phrase meaning "miles traveled for
| every hour spent travelling".
|
| Other fun phrases thrown around without understanding (or
| with similar words mistakenly swapped in):
|
| Miles per gallon.
|
| For all intensive purposes.
|
| Nip it in the butt.
|
| Bone apple tea.
| Spivak wrote:
| Maybe, but it's way more likely that they mean "I took a
| picture of something with myself in the frame."
|
| A selfie can really be any picture where you're holding the
| camera and in the frame. The subject of the photo can be
| something other than you.
|
| "I took a selfie with..." means that I and the other thing
| are the subjects.
|
| "I took a selfie of..." means that the other thing is the
| subject I'm just in the picture.
| dheera wrote:
| No, I very often see people say things like "I took a
| selfie of my dog" and only the dog is in the picture.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| In my native language we have a running joke that goes like
| this: - I had a fie. - ???
| - Ah, it's just like selfie, but when someone else is making
| it for you.
|
| (Originally: _jebka_ / _samojebka_ )
| mdoms wrote:
| At a restaurant someone from a group of youngs once handed me
| her phone and asked me to "take a selfie of us".
| ZacharyPitts wrote:
| My most upvoted reddit comment ever was when I posted a
| "Sacagawea selfie"... by sticking my camera at the end of a
| statue's arm: https://i.imgur.com/UXRUx8q.jpeg
| majormajor wrote:
| It's right under the paragraph about the "plandid," and it
| seems to be a perfect example of that, though the caption makes
| it ambiguous re: intent.
| brudgers wrote:
| That's the point. You accept it as a picture of someone taking
| a selfie. Not just of someone taking a selfie but doing it
| competently.
|
| It's how I am supposed to picture myself to make a good
| selfie...and also how selfies are cast as shallow to make them
| easy to dismiss.
|
| Even though Ansel Adams' self portraits will hang on gallery
| walls as dearly priced artifacts.
| [deleted]
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _But bromine, iodine, chlorine, and silver could not fix an even
| greater failing of early photographs, their impermanence_
|
| Good pun.
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| I have to guess a little at what you mean. My guess is the word
| "fix", having only been tangentially involved with photography
| are these the chemicals that we now call "fixer"?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Fixer is a class of chemicals used in wet photography to
| reduce impermanent, light-sensitive silver ions to permanent
| metallic silver.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Related: Do iPhone or Android cameras have a smoothing filter
| that is default-on and that cannot be turned off? Been wondering
| about this.
| cratermoon wrote:
| All camera phones do heavy processing of the captured pixels.
| This is known as "computational photography". The camera
| software is the only thing that keeps the average camera phone
| picture in the realm of "that's a picture of the thing I meant
| to take a picture of".
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Yes, as noise removal.
| knolan wrote:
| Yes, but some phones give you raw files and some apps can
| bypass the additional processing.
|
| iOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211965
|
| Android https://www.androidbeat.com/2018/10/pixel-3-how-shoot-
| raw-dn...
|
| Alternative iOS camera app:
|
| https://halide.cam/
| zimpenfish wrote:
| As a bonus, Halide also gives you proper control over which
| lens is being used in 2x mode - the iOS camera will flip
| between the 1x lens and 2x lens for 2x depending on focal
| distance - makes a right mess of things if you've got an
| extension lens screwed into 2x...
| brudgers wrote:
| For whatever if anything it might be worth, I would recommend
| Beil's book if you find the ideas in the article interesting.
|
| I mean the American Method is still running round in photographic
| circles as obsession with corner sharpness as a marker of self
| seriousness...and that's where the book starts.
|
| If I had an unmet need, it is the entirety American focus of the
| book leaves me a bit blind to the bigger picture. What was it
| like, I wonder, in Japan?
|
| But then again, good books should raise new questions because new
| questions are the mark of learning. Beil's book certainly feels
| like a potentially "important book" on US photographic history to
| me. YMMV.
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