At 08:24 AM 5/30/2005, Elgenper wrote:
Suddenly people without training can buy a small, convenient camera and
produce lots and lots of decent pictures.
This isn't a new process. It started when Kodak introduced the box
camera. One could look back and say that it would be a whole lot better if
film had never been introduced, then only people capable of managing glass
plates and chemistry would be capable of photographing.
Instead, film came along (and 35mm! wow was that a major change for the
photographers who saw what they did as protection from the masses) and many
more people bought cameras and began to preserve memories and share
events. Very, very sad. Too bad the old school photographers weren't
protected by the difficult-to-master process. Then they would be the only
ones to be able to use cameras.
And then minilabs! This was a terrible blow - people could use cameras and
just drop off film at the drugstore. It made it even worse for "real"
photographers. Now a machine could do adjustments and produce excellent
prints. This was almost the end.
And then digital. The final blow.
Your investment in brass gears and glass falls enormously in value (I
still almost cry when I see what e. g. Hasselblad gear is going for now;
luckily I sold before that),
My investment in gear pays off in photographs.
Your world falls apart, you feel like the dinosaurs looking at the falling
asteroids...
Well some of us want to take photographs and really don't worry too much
about the technology, adopt the parts of it that work and don't use the
ones that don't, and get along with photographing without worrying about
what other people do.
Jeff Spirer
Photos: http://www.spirer.com
One People: http://www.onepeople.com/
Surfaces and Marks: http://www.withoutgrass.com
