too many pictures too little thought

<p>Eric, that was only on the Leica Forum IIRC, and I think it's been years since the pancake bunny has been posted.</p>

<blockquote> "I came from a middle class English

family before WW2 and we had one box brownie.

I should think we took one roll a year maybe two

max and pretty well all pictures were special

occasions and carefully composed. And most

have survived and have value, more than can be

said for the millions/billions of images from

mobile phone cameras and digital point and

shoots."</blockquote><p>

I'm old enough to offer a counterexample. When I

was a youngster 50 years ago, I had an uncle who

was an enthusiastic photographer. He shot slides,

and when the entire family of aunts, uncles, and

cousins got together, he would pull out the slide

projector and run through trays of the slides he

had taken when he and his wife had taken a trip

to some mecca for tourists. Most were shots of

my aunt standing next to tourist attractions or

sitting on the beach. The rest of the family would

vocally complain during the slide show about

how boring and repetitive the shots were, but to

no avail. We had to sit through watching all of

them. After all we were guests in his home, and

he was going to stick to his agenda of running

through and showing all of the images.

<p>It seems quite ironic that some complain about digital media while using digital media to do so.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> in the long run, after we're gone. I'm pretty much of the opinion that that's not my problem - and I'll let the next generations deal with what they want to keep</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I agree. I'm sure no one will want my pictures after I have gone but if they do, it's their problem. If they want to scan them, keep the originals or just dispose of them, I'm not going to care.</p>

<p>I have my father's 1000+ slide collection. There is no way I am going to scan them so we can see them on an inferior monitor or TV. A couple of years ago on the anniversary of my father's death, we had a proper slide show just like he used to give and everyone in the family agreed that it was the best and correct way to view them.</p>

 

<p>Ah, for the good ol' days, when a SmartMedia card lasted a year, had <del>Christmas trees</del> Hanukkah bushes on both ends, with 12 months of lolcats, duckface self portraits and a sprinkling of Johanssoning in between.</p>

<p>"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Reinhold Niebuhr. At my age life is much easier if I don't wallow in the past and stick to those things I can be interested in and capble of doing today. There is nothing I can do about the state of photography today nor do I really care about it nor am I nostaligic about my smelly, hot darkroom where it could take all afternoon to get a 16x20 picture correct after a wedding while trying to do something I can do now in Lightroom in seconds. There is nothing more boring than an old fogey like me telling people how it was back in the day and how much better it used to be. I have to admit I do get into that once in a while and I have to restrain myself particularly when I get to distorting my flying stories with other old pilots who are distorting their flying stories. That mutual lying can be a lot of fun. Like George Allen, the coach not the politician said, "the future is now" at least for me. I don't really care much if my pictures are left for posterity although my progeny will get my cameras, software and fully backed up digital files. I am not interested in controlling things from my grave. As I said, my interest in my pictures and my still prolific picture taking are in the <strong>now. </strong> And like Mr. Niebuhr said doing my best to accept and go along with things I cannot change. </p>

<p>[[i think I already made it clear that I DIDN'T CARE for her photos and neither did she. You weren't there. You don't take a camera on a river in a inner tube and not notice it's NOT THERE. There's no room to put it anywhere but on the person carrying it. They don't bring purses on the river if you haven't already thoroughly thought it through like I just did which I'ld advise you take a moment and think about the logistics of carrying a very expensive device that has cherished memories on it floating slowly down a river.]]</p>

<p><br />That is pure speculation, Tim. You were not there either and you do not know the circumstances in which the camera was lost. To invent some story of a person you do not know, never saw, and do not understand and claim that you know for certain they don't care about the images is absurd. Your post is nothing more than an excuse to wave some misplaced sense of moral superiority around. You should take a moment to get a sense of perspective.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>That is pure speculation</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

It certainly is. It could have been thrown in by an angry friend, for example. I saw that once with a cellphone, although it was thrown into traffic and promptly crushed.</p>

<p>Jeff "in-Spirer-ed" again. That angle never entered my mind. Thanks, Jeff.</p>

<p>I think you relieved me of my anguish of constantly wondering why this girl would take risks with such a cherished and expensive device without a wrist strap on a river. The pictures did show a lot of tubers on the river with her friends in the foreground.</p>

<p>I just know at that age which was when I went on that river on my honeymoon with my former wife, I wouldn't even have taken such a device on the river in fear of getting it wet or dropping it in the water.</p>

<p>My closing comments --- I'm amazed that I seem to be only one who cares about old family related photographs. Its certainly not the case with every generation of my family. A niece has been researching our family histories for years, my living room photo wall features wedding groups from 1903 to 2002 and my daughter who is a Facebook idiot posted a recently discovered photo and story of a grand uncle who was killed in Palestine in the First World War and whose history was revealed by my niece after his campaign medals were found. Ancestry websites seem to abound so there must be a lot of people who do care about the past. 50 years from now things may be different when faced with the dross of tens of thousands of largely pointless digisnaps, that's presupposing they exist in some retrievable form. <br>

btw as far as I remember a box Brownie was fixed focus, single appature fixed speed and you only used it in good daylight. Flash I don't think existed then at homeuse level. Also btw we never dressed for dinner, I think you've got your classes mixed up, Downton Abbey was the aristocracy!</p><div></div>

<blockquote>

<p>my daughter who is a Facebook idiot</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

1) I hope your daughter has other relatives she can depend on. 2) I am really happy that my parents supported me even when they didn't understand the things that were important to me. 3) I hope your daughter has other relatives she can depend on.</p>

<p>you probably have to be English to understand dry humour, and she is always asking for old pics to post!</p>

<p>We have dry humor here, we just don't say rude things about our children. We call it respect. Interestingly, my British friends don't say rude things about their children either. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>btw as far as I remember a box Brownie was fixed focus, single appature fixed speed and you only used it in good daylight. Flash I don't think existed then at homeuse level.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>So, the camera was only good for...posed candid shots.</p>

<p>So, they took lots of...posed candid shots. Imagine that!</p>

<p>The question becomes, if they then had what we have today, would they have used it differently?</p>

<p> I still like a good print and my kids like things on-line. The world moves on is all. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"I'm amazed that I seem to be only one who cares about old family related photographs."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You're not. By default I've become the family curator for thousands of photos and other mementos dating back to the late 1800s. Many are mundane snaps of kids and family on rolls with a Christmas tree on both ends. A few are very good. Most would be meaningless to anyone else.</p>

<p>But I don't see any conflict in values between appreciating those photos for what they are - a reflection of the equipment and knowledge available in that era - and the current practices using digital.</p>

<p>By the way, "serious" photographers said exactly the same disparaging things in the late 1890s about the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=kodak%20fiends&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&source=hp&channel=np">"Kodak fiends"</a> who were regarded as the pestilence ruining photography for the real photographers. Kodak wisely embraced that concept of everyperson photography, encouraging taking lots of shots by prefilling Kodaks with 100 exposure rolls, and catering to women through lots of ads featuring women photographers without being too obviously condescending. Google around for vintage ads from the era of the Chicago World's Fair (Columbian Exposition).</p>

<p>So it's a little ironic to see how nostalgia goggles affect current perceptions of rollfilm box camera photography as being somehow better than the type of photography people choose to enjoy now. If anything, everyperson snapshots now are better than ever. Folks who don't label themselves "photographers" can snap all the frames they want without worrying about cost, select those they like to share with others, and have ready access to online tutorials to help them improve. Teenagers with smartphone cameras are taking better photos than I did at that age using b&w film.</p>

I put a lot of thought into every photograph that I shoot. I can't claim that it's always the RIGHT thought (or more accurately the right combination of thoughts). Sometimes my ideas don't result in an aesthetically pleasing photograph; sometimes the outcome is dull or silly or laughably bad. But by freely experimenting with possibilities - possibilities that admittedly can fall flat on their face - I allow myself the potential to learn and to develop over time, even if I fail spectacularly in this moment.

 

If the measure of success were to take some modest number of images each year and have them all turn out to be both

meaningful and exquisitely composed, think of all of the risks that we would avoid. Think of the opportunities that we

would forgo because we were afraid simply to take a chance, afraid to fail, afraid to be ridiculed by those who supposedly

know better, afraid to not measure up to some arbitrary standard of hits versus misses.

 

No thank you!

 

I'm perfectly comfortable with making mistakes - LOTS of mistakes. I'm delighted to experiment with shots that miss the

mark or go laughingly wrong. In the process I am fine tuning what I want to capture in this situation and in similar

settings in the future. Dabbling, testing, revising, adjusting, re-envisioning. At the end of the day it might ALL end up in the trash bin. There were times in the past I threw away entire rolls of film. Who cares? There's no stigma to failure when you're experimenting freely. If I learn something in the process, some tip or trick or measurement that I can put to good use in the future, the entire experience was worthwhile. Later, I get to sit down with friends and share tales over drinks of how badly it all went. Not a bad deal! Not bad at all.

<p>I don't think it's about lack of thought, it is simple data inflation. As of circa 2012 more data is generated on the internet in one day than the entire span of human history up to 2003. Think about that, it is mind-blowing. The means of the photos have changed, but they still hold emotional value to those that view them. Just each photo means a little less because the general narrative of our life is so detailed now thanks to digital technology.<br>

Prints suffer from inflation too, my Mom laments how no one prints and displays photos anymore, never mind the fact she probably has somewhere around 10,000 4x6 photos sitting in boxes that will probably never see the light of day. </p>