Headline, year 2025: Photography goes way of the Dodo bird

[sobeystudio]

Well, maybe not 2025, but when? My point being, we know video killed the radio star, but will it kill

photography too? How important is the still image in an increasingly video savvy and dynamic society

geared towards the moving image? What do we do, as photographers, to keep photography a valid and

valuable medium? Will advancements in technology and society at large render photography a dead

medium?

[neesha_lin]

A worthwhile topic for discussion.

[William Kahn]

Well, considering all the permutations that photography has been through since the first camera obscura, I'd say it's a pretty robust art and likely to be around for much longer than you think. There were those at the turn of the 20th century who wailed that photography was the death of art. Artists are still painting, right? Technology will change (and has changed) equipment and techniques, but it won't kill it.

[randmcnatt]

"...we know video killed the radio star..."

 

You have the figures behind that? Or are you arguing your point based on catchy lyrics?

[john falkenstine]

Actually, greed killed the Radio Star, and it was never that bright to start with. I remember American Radio in the South in the Early seventies. Mostly Paul Harvey and the hog market reports. No international news of any kind.

[my site]

Maybe people will soon have screens embedded in the walls of their homes with multiple video screens in every room, but until then, you cannot hang a video on your wall; you cannot have a nice coffee table video album or place videos on t-shirts, coffee mugs and other objects. We all like to watch movies, but I bet most people look at the photo albums of special events more than they watch the videos of them. Videos just cannot catch a single moment or emotion in the same way that a photograph can.

 

Things may change. Maybe not the way some people think though. You can always look at a print (assuming you have some light), but you cannot watch a video unless you have some form of power.

 

Joe

[nic bower]

editing digital pics is a hell of a lot easier than editing DV ! - wirelessly my digital pics are

displayed on a large LCD (TV) hanging on the wall from a simple slide show created in

Aperture. The impact is amazing. No blurting TV, cut/cut/cut, strobelling light all over the

place. The future is bright - we will soon have screens the size of walls as Joe suggests and

these will only bring more life and impact to the still image.

[jtk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsvAuXj0AQs

[morgan lee]

There's no money in writing a novel. Still, Stephen King made out O.K. One of the lowest-paying niches of novel writing is young adult fiction. I don't think J.K. Rowling is losing any sleep over that statistic. Opera has been considered a "dead" art for about a hundred years. Pavarotti hardly died a pauper.

As for radio, Sirius and XM are doing O.K. I don't think Howard Stern is worried the utility companies will turn off his power because his bill is overdue. The music industry has changed a lot. Performers now make a large share of their income with a much older art; live performance.

As for photography, yes, the market is saturated but I really don't think it's going anywhere. It is evolving. Robert Clark's journey across America taught us just how much a great photographer can get out of a cell phone camera. It made me realize I can never complain about not having good enough gear again.

Finally, I think photographs capture a moment better than any video be it the personality expressed in a good portrait or the memory of a special day or place.

[ian_tindale]

In the year 2525 (if man is still alive), it's likely that even cartoons will still proliferate, despite the development of painting, still photography, cinematography and possibly even full 3d scene recording and replay of the sort that we see R2D2 exhibit in the little-known film 'Star Wars'. Additional realism, pushing individual media along the continuum of hot to cool or vice versa doesn't displace other media. Cartoons remain as popular an art form as ever despite the fact that you never see people as thick black outlines with a few abstracted facial features inside, because there's room on the continuum for all.

 

A camera that shoots scenes as full-motion cartoons, though - there'd be a thing.

[beeman458]

"Photography goes way of the Dodo bird"

 

One might study the history of the Dodo bird before drawing comparisons. :)

 

Photography is going do just fine as each technological development increases photography's popularity. In order for photography to die, there has to be a complete and total lack of interest in the process; writing with light; making fixed images.

 

I just don't see one's wallet becoming a video storage vault for vanity pics of the kids and video picture frames, to me, are very distracting and you see very few of them, if at all, even today. All of this is telling of what the future holds.

[jeff_s]

Video was very popular perhaps 20 years ago, and it made inroads for shelf space at the camera shops, but it kind of waned along with VHS tape, while digital got people excited about still photography again.

 

High definition digital video cameras are now surprisingly affordable though, and iMovie08 looks very good for actually creating a program, but sometimes, a single still frame says all that you want/need to say.

[dickhilker]

Some pictures need motion to tell their story, while others succeed as static images. Some need color and others are more successful in B&W. So long as there are viewers who can understand and appreciate images that don't jump and shout their message, I feel still photography will have a place in our lives.

 

Popular culture demands blaring music, vivid moving images and over-the-top approaches to just about everything, so appreciation of the simple, articulate and cerebral will become even less common than it is today. But, I believe it will persist in some quarters. Hope springs eternal.

[sobeystudio]

Thank You All-

I too believe photography will still be around (I shoot video too though). The question

was just rhetorical, of course. However, I do feel there will be big things coming in this an era

of quick paced changes in technology and peoples desires to have the latest and greatest

gizmos. I still have yet to see an answer about what we as photographers can do to keep

photography valid and valuable. As technology gets better, more and more still imagery will

be made from existing video. Are we as photographers going to start shooting moving

images and edit from a streaming body of work? Newspapers are losing sales to TV new and

magazines to the WEB, so....

[beeman458]

"I still have yet to see an answer about what we as photographers can do to keep photography valid and valuable."

 

Forgive my oversimplification as to a response. One needs to do nothing as there's no threat on the far, hundred year horizon. Learn photographic history, use your still photographic gear to your hearts content, have fun while doing so and don't forget to share your passion with those, other than you, when they ask.

 

Remember, first and foremost, it's all about entertainment, just as in modern society, riding horses has become something one does, not something one has to learn how to do as was once the case. :)

[beeman458]

Here's a thought, how rarefied is photography today? This should give us a clue.

 

Google;

 

Photo forums; 238,000,000 hits. :)

 

http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=Photo+Forums&btnG=Google+Search

 

And we all have are favorite half-dozen (or more) that we haunt. :)

[beeman458]

Exchange "are" for "our."

 

Doh!

 

Where's that edit function? :)

[beeman458]

Now we'll Google "photo blogs."

 

http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=Photo+Forums&btnG=Google+Search

 

Nope, no lack of Pop-Culture interest here either. :)

[beeman458]

Opps on the link.

 

Correct link.

 

Photo Blogs: 461,000,000 hits.

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=Photo+Blogs&btnG=Search

 

Again, no shortage of international interest. :)

[gale]

I am not sure why someone would make such a statement. Personally, I think the invent of the DSLR has opened the hobby to the masses, many of whom wight not have ever concidered venturing into such a potentially complicated art. Add to this software and home photo printers and hundreds of forums, photo clubs, art shows, etc. I think photography is bigger than it has ever been. I will go one step further and say that the current and ever changing technologies have kept film alive and obsolete cameras alive and even the dark room alive. It has been a 'Wake', an 'Enlightening' of individualism. New photgraphers knowing only digital are now playing with film, MF and LF camera gear. They are taking classes and learning dark room. IF anything, I beleive we film shooters (thats me), owe new technologies a bit of gratitude as it has make our medium choice simpler to keep alive and work with. I haven't been in a dark room in years and in my busy scedual, my Digital darkroom and scanner has kept my old Canon FD gear alive and usable. Thank you.

 

If photography is in any kind of trouble, then so are other arts...music, color and pencil and others, stage, film, creative writing and so on.

 

The only real threat I see is the robbing of our children's creativity and potential individualism and personal choices. We must teach our children, love them and encourage them in their personal directions.

 

Keep dreams alive.

 

Dave

[Spearhead]

Asking this question on a photography forum will get all the expected answers. It's like asking a bunch of railroad engineers in 1949 if airplanes were a viable method of mass transportation.

 

Most people that see images other than their own don't see them hanging on walls, they don't see them in coffee table books. They seem them on the internet, in newspapers and magazine, on billboards, on flyers and packaging. What most here don't seem to realize is that these are increasingly stills taken from video capture.

 

We're getting very close to a crossover in technology - a 1DMk3 can shoot 10fps for ten seconds. When you spin through the photos quickly, it's not that different from video. There are new cameras coming that have lower resolution but higher continuous frame rates, and eventually it will be digital video at higher resolution. As this technology becomes more and more affordable, there won't be a big difference between still and video, and most stills that most people see (once again, very few people have collections of photographs other than family hanging on their walls) will be from video capture, or near-video capture.

 

Also, the dominance of youtube and similar sites on the internet is an indicator of where things are going. People upload videos now, something they didn't do five years ago. They share videos. The news sites play videos.

 

People always mention painting as an analogy. Painting is a good analogy - it's moved from a prominent place in society, before photography was widely available, to a rarefied art. How many painters do the people here who are not working in the art world know? If you don't go to museums and galleries, you don't see recent paintings, except maybe murals in urban areas.

 

What most of the responses here reflect is an attachment to a technology rather than to a personal vision or artistic desire. If one has something they want to say, they say it with the tools that are available. Being familiar with a set of tools makes it a whole lot easier, but being unwilling to see that new tools may become the way to do it only means the desire to communicate isn't really all that strong.

 

Finally, FWIW, I had a shoot last night at a sporting event. There were six photographers, but not one of us had any control over anything - it was broadcast on live TV and we were bound to stay out of their way, let them get in our way, use their lighting, etc. etc. I probably lost 25% of my shots because I had to shoot directly into the video lighting, or because the video guys were between me and the action. And one location that I usually shoot and get a lot of sales from was completely controlled by the video crew and off-limits. Our photos will show up on some web sites, a few print publications, some publicity material, mostly seen by fans. The video was broadcast live in the US and Asia and will be re-run and available on DVD.

 

It's worth pointing out that two of the still photographers were also shooting video.

 

I think it's important for photographers to not stick their heads in the sand, but to see that there are ways to work with new visual technologies. Photographers have been making movies for years (Robert Frank and Graciela Iturbide come to mind) as ways to extend their creative vision. On both commercial and non-commercial fronts, video is becoming more and more prevalent, and that's not going to stop.

[beeman458]

Jeff, maybe you, or I, missed the point of the question.

 

"My point being, we know video killed the radio star, but will it kill photography too?"

 

Life moves on but photography will be here long after this century plays itself out.

 

Working with a few of your points.

 

"What most here don't seem to realize is that these are increasingly stills taken from video capture."

 

MF digital is the main form factor in advertising, fashion and sports, irrespective of your personal experiences. Not trying to kick over a pissing contest but photo galleries at football and golf are dominated by Canon white glass; even with live video telecast present.

 

"People always mention painting as an analogy. Painting is a good analogy - it's moved from a prominent place in society, before photography was widely available, to a rarefied art."

 

And yet, as a service provider, I see painterly art in most of the thousands of homes I go into (prints of painterly art if they can't afford the originals), just south of your SF venue; Los Altos/Los Altos Hills, Mt View, Sunnyvale, Saratoga, Los Gatos, San Jose, Cupertino, Santa Clara and Milpitas. :)

 

"...but being unwilling to see that new tools may become the way to do it only means the desire to communicate isn't really all that strong."

 

Life moves forward, always, into the next century (waiting for the asteroid to shake things up) but we still have many things, common to the 14th/15th century, in daily abundance.

 

"I think it's important for photographers to not stick their heads in the sand, but to see that there are ways to work with new visual technologies."

 

I didn't see the OP's question as a question of adapting to, or embracing the next generation of technology as much as I saw it as a question, would photography become extinct, for what ever reason, as did the Dodo bird. Don't see that happening and the web has made photography more popular then ever because of the ease in which images can be stored and shared, hence the Google links. 461,000,000 blog hits is a lot of interest for a potentially out of favor endeavor.

 

Phase One or Leaf? A mighty pricey product for something that's out of favor.

 

http://www.phaseone.com/

 

http://www.leafamerica.com/products.asp

 

I'm not being myopic in my above.

 

Google "Digital Backs" and one comes up with a paltry 2,530,000 hits.

 

http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=Digital+Backs&btnG=Google+Search

 

"What do we do, as photographers, to keep photography a valid and valuable medium? Will advancements in technology and society at large render photography a dead medium?"

 

Share our passion as does everybody else who has a Jones.

 

Potting, sculpting, quilting, dance, art, charcoal, pen/ink, trains are quite alive and vibrant. The operative I took away from the question was "valid" as if video supplants the validity of photography via "image grab" from the video stream, then so be it as "value," to me is based upon "need." If the need's not there, then let video, or what ever technology take it's place but there will always (a thousand years/two thousand years) be some sort of photography (writing with light) available to the general public just as there are still horses, clothing material, calculators, forms of written word, boats/ships, plays, concerts and anything else you choose to throw on the pile of useful artifacts from two, three, four or more thousand years ago. :)

 

Me? My opinion, based upon my above, I think photography is just getting started and is many years from it's zenith, which it will eventually reach and then level off, but not because of a lack of interest but due to market saturation because interest in stills, irrespective of developing technology (8"X10" view Vs Cellphone camera), is here to stay.

[beeman458]

Correction.

 

"MF digital is the main form factor in advertising, fashion and sports,..."

 

Remove sports and it's the 1DMk II and now the MkIII that's the current sports form factor.

 

Doh! :)

[william_john_smith1]

Now that we have photography there is no need for painters.

[beeman458]

Maybe the venerable Mark Twain's comment will sum it up best.

 

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" as we still read his words.

 

:D