Whither Photography Looking Ahead

Hello readers. I would like to thank you all up front for your support of the channel over the years. No that is not a retirement statement, I just appreciate each of you who chooses to read, listen and occasionally comment on the work.

Please be advised that my usual control of language may not be applied in this last article of 2023.

Whither Photography in 2024 and Beyond

Depending on who you talk to, photography died with film, entered a renaissance with digital, grew in orders of magnitude with smartphones and has entered a new age with the release, (some would say dump) of AI labeled software.

All are correct in their conclusions, and completely wrong for others. That is, as it should be. What follows is my PERSONAL opinion and as always, you may choose to read it, and then make your own determination of whether it applied in whole or in part to your own perspective. Don’t write to tell me I am wrong, because it is quite possible that from your position, I am wrong and that indicates that you think for yourself. Congratulations on doing that.

On Film

Photography did not die with the end of film, and is not resurrected by the current interest in film. Film is a medium. Making images successfully with film takes a different set of skills than making images with digital. The two are not the same except that at the end, there is an image. A film image is not by default better, or worse than a digital image. It’s only a medium. If you as a creative derive enjoyment from working with film, that’s awesome, but it’s likely that others may think that you are nuts or want to stick a hipster label on you. Fuck that noise. If you think film is the remnant of a dead age, you are right for yourself, but that does not mean that you are right overall, so if you spend time lambasting film users, find another pastime, film users don’t give a rat’s hairy about your opinion.

On Smartphone Cameras

Smartphones have dramatically changed the means to take pictures. They are the current equivalent, and replacement for, every pocket camera that has ever existed. The smartphone is the 110 camera, the 126 camera, the 35mm point and shoot and the digital point and shoot for the world today. More than two billion pictures are snapped on smartphones each day. That the great majority are utterly meaningless even to the snapper really doesn’t matter. They do not change the world and never will if they are shot without plan and intent. However they are better than any snapshot tool ever made. Sharper, with better colours and more easily adjusted than anything else, ever. There has never been such an excellent snapshot tool. Smartphones do not make photographs however. Only people make photographs, the smartphone is merely a tool. You do not get what was actually seen by the sensor because they all use computational photography based on algorithms to produce what the makers have decided is the “best looking” result. Some people wonder where the HDR function went in modern smartphones. The reality is that every picture is an HDR image. This is fabulous for snapshooters. For the serious photographer, you have no control over depth of field, or shutter speed, or ISO. You have no control over how the picture is processed before initial viewing, and I do not mean a choice of alteration filters, I mean the actual data capture that is converted to a picture. As in any camera, RAW is never truly raw. All RAW data sets have been processed as they are saved, and you can do nothing about this. For the smartphone user, this is just fine. They don’t care and don’t want to, so long as the picture pleases them. While you can take pictures simply, and effectively with a smartphone, you cannot make a photograph, because the level of human control during data capture is basically non-existent. Thus the term smartphone photographer is actually bullshit.

On Shooting in RAW

The demand to always shoot in RAW is another form of dung. Data analysis tells us that over 99% of pictures taken or photographs made never extend beyond a small phone display, or a computer screen or posted to some form of social media. The reality which is based on science and not on “feelings” is that the level of quality, resolution and the amount of compression needed means that starting in RAW does not matter over 95% of the time. RAW only matters if you will be making high resolution large prints. There is nothing wrong with shooting RAW all the time, but it is self delusional to believe that the initial data capture format matters at all when the outcome is going to be viewed solely on a smartphone, or Facebook or Instagram. No one on any of those platforms is ever going to see the amount of work you spend post processing a RAW file, and honestly, unless you have a very high end display and make 16 bit prints, you won’t either.

On Moronic Phraseology

I confess that one of my personal interests is etymology, the study of how words are formed, as well as how phrases are formed in language. One of the most moronic, driven solely by advertising to the weak willed is “nice capture”. While photography, like any other industry or hobby can be filled with idiotic phrases this one takes the proverbial cake. A capture by definition, is the recording of data to a storage medium. There is no human involvement in the process whatsoever. No person is needed for a capture. Surveillance cameras make millions (billions?) of captures every day all day without any humans involved at all. Nice capture says that the piece of technology did a fine job. The technology has no emotional attachment and someone calling it nice is wasting air and demonstrating that they have been swayed by marketing sloganeering meant to make the stupid believe that they had anything to do with the data capture at all. A great, or even “nice” photograph results from the human eye / brain. This is what true artists know to be the art of seeing. If you wish to complement a real photograph, perhaps consider “great seeing”, or “nice seeing”. “Nice capture” just shows how shallow one can be.

On AI Plugins

Fortunately for all of us, none of this stuff is actual AI. It is a very sophisticated series of probability matrices working against massive datasets, but there is no intelligence of any kind involved. Probability is not intelligence. Consider yourselves fortunate that there is no actual intelligence involved. However, these tools while very sophisticated remove the creator from the process entirely. Whether used for noise reduction, sharpening or resizing, these powerful tools make decisions based on their own matrices independent of the artist. Copyright offices have already ruled that AI created art can never have a copyright. If you do so bad a job in the image creation that you need to resort to an AI tool to fix your screwup, are you still the artist? Or are you more accurately a contributor to the final output, therefore not having full rights to the created content? The vast majority don’t care. and while I understand this acceptance of laziness and lack of aptitude, for me it is a direct contradiction of the artist him or herself. If you do a sky replacement from some download of skies, is your work still your own? If you make a composite using the work of others is the work still your own? Not at all if reality matters. You may have been the artist, but only in the sense of being able to create a collage, like any five year old, with scissors and a pot of glue. It sure as fuck isn’t photography.

On AI Art

The tools that exist whether ChatGPT, Midjourney or whatever are fascinating, but what they create is not art. There are myriad “courses” on how to create the best prompts to create the best possible art. This is a burning sack of dogshit. There is no art involved in what gets built. A prompt is a series of phrases, with perhaps a bit more order than the ramblings of an idiot. It’s not actually created art, it is imagery based on content taken from data sets, the majority of which was stolen and used without the original creators permission. It’s theft pure and simple. If you use such blobs of pixels in your composite photograph, you acknowledge and accept that you are not creating art, or even a photograph. It’s maybe some of your content along with a bunch of stolen content. I understand that lots of people enjoy it. Even I am impressed by what can come from it, but nothing that falls out is art, no matter what some marketing weasel says.

On Smarter Cameras

“Oh I bought this camera and replaced by last camera, that I really never learned to use properly, because this one has pet eye focus, and automatically sharpens feather edges.” It also sings and dances and makes Julienne fries. Ron Popeil never envisioned how lazy people could be and how easily they could be swayed to believe that the automation of a basic skill would revel their brute stupidity. If you cannot learn how to focus properly without face, eye, anus or whatever automatic detection, pack it in and get yourself some crayons, but only the eight colour box because the 64 colour box will be far too complicated.

On Megapixels

“Oh I just got his new camera with 100 megapixels, so I will get better pictures!” Nope. Even something so mundane as a picture still requires actual thought and no thought produces nothing of value, however many pixels go into it. It also means that the speaker is a moron, with no understanding or attempt to understand the effect of pixel density, pixel voltage, digital signal to noise ratio and the output resolution. In fishing, this is good bait because it catches a large number of really dumb fish. Your 100 megapixel RAW, carefully processed will look no better than the image from an 8 megapixel sensor on a standard 4K display. If you have a normal 2K display, aka HD display, it will look no better than an ancient 2 megapixel sensor. Math works. All the time, and never takes into consideration marketing, lies or stupidity.

Let’s consider data from a printer’s handbook on dots per inch resolution based on viewing distance. If for example, the viewing distance (always considering a viewer in good light and with good vision) for two feet away and under is 300 dots per inch. That means that the common 8x10 print requires no more than 7.2 megapixels in a sensor to produce an excellent print. Now step back to say 6 ½ feet away where the printer handbook says that a print need deliver only 90 dots per inch, and let’s say that we are working with a print size of 30 inches wide by 20 inches high. In this scenario, only just under 4.9 megapixels are required. Now let’s suppose that the printer doesn’t understand his or her business at all and decides that the 30 x 20 print should be printed at 300 dpi because you can afford all that extra ink and the time it takes to print it. Then one would require 54 million pixels, or 54 megapixels to make that print, and it wouldn’t matter because no human being could see the difference.

Of course, this does not take into account that lower life form known as the pixel peeper. As better folks than I have said and is proven every day, you can’t fix stupid, and you cannot have a rational conversation with the insane. If you buy into the megapixel song and dance, PT Barnum would have loved you.

What Should You Do to Help Make More Satisfying Photographs

My prescription for serious photographers is really quite straightforward. There is no rocket science or complicated math involved.

Learn what the dynamic range of your sensor is and then leverage that knowledge in how you expose your image

Learn how to use the spot meter function in your camera, not as the source of final exposure selection but as a tool to learn how much dynamic range is in the scene that you are going to photograph, and then decide where you want to place the lightest and darkest elements within the total dynamic range of your sensor. Don’t use the spot meter for your overall exposure choice until you know which part of the total dynamic range you want to fall into the mid tones.

Learn how to Expose To The Right, only if you are a digital photographer. If you are a film photographer, you want to learn to go the other way, although this is much more difficult and finite due to the very limited dynamic range of film, compared to the dynamic range of a digital sensor.

Learn to understand and SEE the three elements of light, Direction, Colour and Quality.

Learn and Study Composition. When you meet someone who tells you that the first rule is to break the rules, run away. You are in the presence of a dangerous idiot. There are no rules of composition, but there are guides that will help you compose more successful images.

Instead of pouring money into gear to make images of the same old thing, spend that money so you can go be in front of interesting subjects. With no offence intended, your dog is always going to be your dog, not matter how much you spend on gear.

If you consider a workshop, ask if the workshop leader will be photographing during the workshop. If the answer is yes, don’t attend as you are only paying for someone else’s vacation.

Print out and study an EV chart that shows shutter speed, and aperture for a variety of ISO settings. This is very basic knowledge that is missing in most people

Challenge yourself to become a human light meter. This is best accomplished using an incident light meter, but the meter in your camera and a grey card will do the job as well. Pick an ISO and try to determine without a meter what an appropriate shutter speed and aperture would be, then check. This requires diligence and practice and it is amazing how quickly you can build this skill

Don’t buy more software or plugins unless you have a specific issue where you have completely exhausted all the potential from the tools that you have and have learned completely. Be one of the 1% not fished in by the latest marketing claim

Eschew all the AI bullshit. Do everything you can on your own, without any AI tools. Your work remains entirely your own, and you are not dependent on the whims and future extraneous charges of weasels. You will also become a better and faster processor of images.

Wrapping It Up

Thanks for reading. I expect that I will have annoyed some readers with some of my comments. Some may even stop participating in the channel. I care more about creating actual value for my readers than pandering to nonsense, and as always, you folks should be making your own decisions and fostering your own conclusions based solely on your own needs/wants.

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