Fleeting
Photography: An analysis of how pictures are taken and shared in today’s media
world
By:
Merideth Tumasz
The
George Washington University
December
2014
Abstract
Pictures are more
than just something to look at. They convey messages in ways words cannot.
While today’s times are different than say that of 50 years ago, pictures still
show meaning. Instead of a device for remembering, pictures are now used as a
placeholder in time, showing real-time events to people across the world as a
way to connect those who are separated through physical distances.
Photographs
can also be a means of personal entertainment. While the value of a picture
might not last as long as it used to, it can be used as a device to show off
oneself, especially on social media. Obtaining the best and most unique
pictures to get the most “likes” or the most comments are
what young people strive for nowadays. An event might not seem to happen if
there are no pictures to prove it.
Besides
proving that events happen, pictures are also a form of documentation that news
sources use to convey stories. With photos being so speedily made and mass-distributed, photojournalists are facing an
unpredictable future. Smartphone capability as well as sharing technology can
make anyone an amateur photojournalist, making people wonder why we still need
to carry bulky DSLR’s. While no one
can predict the future of photography, speed is definitely the biggest advantage
and obstacle.
Thesis
Photos
today are so rapidly spread and plentiful that they do not need to show the
past but rather the current time, they act as a connector to unite and brag to
friends across any geographic obstacles, and are also so easy to produce that
photojournalists are facing an uncertain future with smartphone photography
becoming so prominent.
Introduction
When analyzing the
history of photography, one of the original uses was for middle class families
to experience portraits, just like the wealthy. It was cheaper to have one’s
photo taken, than to have to be painted by a portrait artist for several hours,
hence the development of taking pictures.
Over time, cameras became more and more advanced, allowing for portraiture
to become more commercially possible. This was also a way for families to show
their unity and to be remembered, in a time (the late 1800’s) where everything
around them was rapidly changing.
With the
widespread use of the telegraph, face-to-face interaction started to become
less common. So with photographs, especially family photo albums, pictures
became a way for people to be remembered and still feel a sense of closeness.
All these pictures, mostly found in the middle class, became a status symbol.
Even though the pictures being produced were becoming cheaper and cheaper, the
rarity of photographs as an alternative to paintings made families seem in
higher social standings than probably was the case.
With mass
production of cheaper, commercial film cameras and cheaper printing rates,
families were able to capture more moments and share them with more people.
Ordering “doubles” (two copies of the same picture) became a normal practice.
Personal cameras also allowed for more personalization and a glimpse into
families’ private lives, more specifically, within the household.
Once digital
photography became the standard, this idea of personalization and sharing sky-rocketed. Pictures were everywhere: cell phones,
computer screens, and even being able to hook up cameras to view on
televisions. Handing out print photos was no longer the norm. Who needs a paper
copy when one can have an unlimited amount of digital copies?
Digital pictures
are fleeting, some are deleted and die within seconds.
The act of preserving photos through albums and shoeboxes are rare practices
now. Photos are no longer used to remember things, or to preserve moments, but
to explain what’s happening at an exact moment. Everyone can know what you’re
doing right now within a matter of seconds.
The
younger, “me, me, me” (Generation Y, CommsMasters.com) generation today takes
pictures to show what they are doing at the precise moment the picture was
taken. Instead of preserving the moment, they are sharing with the world what
they are up to in this moment of time. It almost comes down to a matter of
bragging rights to share the best pictures, but these pictures are fleeting,
and usually lose their importance and luster within minutes.
Before
the explosion of digital camera technology, photos were printed and preserved
through photo albums, storage containers, and even framing. Today, most images
never make it off a phone or computer screen. The photo prints would show value
and remembrance, especially with family portraits. Now, photos act more as a
means of personal entertainment instead of a tool for remembering and
preserving.
As
far as what people use to take pictures, most amateur photographers use their
smartphones with camera capabilities. With the recent release of the iPhone 6
and 6 +, the features of it surpass some high-end cameras. This can prove
frustrating and problematic for traditional photographers and photojournalists.
It can seem outdated and obsolete to bring a large DSLR to a news event when
someone can easily and discreetly snap a picture with their
smartphone.
This
paper aims to show how photography has changed over time, how it affects
private and personal worlds today, and where the future of photography and
photojournalism may be headed.
(Sidenote:
The term “Generation Y” will be used throughout this paper, and this will
signify Americans born roughly between the years of 1980-2000).
Pictures as Placeholders Versus Pictures as
a Device for Remembrance
George Eastman, one of the
founders of Kodak, set out on a mission to create cameras for ordinary people
with ordinary budgets. It was time for photography to spread outside of the
professional photographer’s world and become a global market. With the birth of Kodak, the
amount of photography skill needed was minimal, and the cost of the camera,
film, and photo-finishing decreased over time, making
it affordable to a very wide audience. Kodak’s main goal for picture-taking
in the beginning was taking pictures of leisure and past-time activities. This,
over time, shifted to pictures taken in the privacy of one’s home, which were
sorted into family albums.
The mothers of the family usually organized and curated all
of the family photos. They sometimes even took the pictures too. This proved
not just a hobby for men, but as an opportunity for the women to represent the
family through a crafted collection of images in an album.
“In the Kodak marketing rhetoric, the photo album was like
an antique in which photographs are transformed into ‘a timeless, handmade, and
personal piece of collection’ for telling stories of nostalgia,” (Snapshot
Photography 59).
When
film photographs were the main form of pictures, these prints were highly
valued and treasured. They were preserved in frames or albums, and looked at
frequently as a means of remembering important events. One of the biggest uses
was to document family life, inside and outside of the home, giving a personal
narrative of someone’s relations, carefully preserved to last through future
generations.
Now, if a picture is taken, it might not even be seen by
anyone else besides the photographer. How many selfies
do teenage girls take and then delete before they get the perfect one? The
rarity of a photograph no longer exists, though one can argue that actual print
photographs are rare. Why print a picture out when it can be shared across the
world within seconds? The personal touch of a photo can be lost in this new
digital world.
The feeling of holding a physical photograph creates
nostalgia and can take the viewer back to a certain place in time. When Kodak
was in its prime, this was its key advertising angle, as shown in the quote
above. The idea of a timeless image held strong in a time of fast-changing
photo technology.
Photo albums are independent of technological changes. They
serve as an archive that could withstand time, in the eyes of the owner. This
is still true today. “It is much more probable that a paper print can be viewed
in 20 years’ time than a digital image in JPEG format,” (Snapshot Photography,
146). While photo albums cannot withstand harsh conditions such as severe
weather and temperatures, if preserved correctly, they have the ability to last
longer than a digital image. There is no way to tell if JPEG’s will still be used
50 years from now, The entire technology could shift again and all of those
digital images could become obsolete.
It’s not just the formats that are becoming obsolete though, it’s the content in the images. Now, with a plethora
of digital technology, everything in life can be documented. Everything from
the mundane to the once-in-a-lifetime moments, can all
be captured digitally and shared with the world instantaneously.
Technology is no longer photo-centric, but sharing focused.
It is not always the picture itself that is the most important, but how fast it
can be shared. Whether this is who is with the photographer at the time of the
photo, or people halfway across the world, due to such amazing technology,
images are never hard to find.
Photos act as performative objects
with the fact that they are there to entertain. They serve their purpose and
then people move on. Camera phone pictures are more suited for instantaneous
consumption, rather than long-lasting enjoyment. Photographs on camera phones
can be easily forgettable because the storage is so large, and each individual
picture can lose its worth, competing against so many other images for
attention.
This image competition means pictures are constantly being
deleted off memory sources such as camera phones. The owner
of the phone controls their own personal archive. They can choose which
pictures to preserve and which ones to eliminate. They do not have to keep
images for the good of the group, such as a family. Whatever images they want
to represent their life, they get to choose. The notion, especially popular
among the current teenage generation (Generation Y), can now be more creative
and are able to construct their own version of family
life. A static family portrait set up by mom and dad is no longer the only
option to show off the private workings of family life.
In a more modern-day twist of
mom and dad controlling the pictures, this is true of newborns who cannot speak for themselves. Parents today post
all of a child’s life events, from birth to first Halloween to first whatever.
Their personal photo album is being created for them. People already have
representations of who they are before they can even
talk. When these children reach an age where they are allowed to use social
media, they will already have online identities created by their parents,
without any permission. Instead of
private family albums of a child growing up, it will all be preserved and shown
online, for all of the world to watch as a child grows
up.
A Connective Media: Using Social Media
Before digital
cameras, for a picture to be shared, it must be printed out. The lapse
in-between taking a picture and the development could take days, making it hard
to share pictures with people who are gone physically after a picture is taken.
Kodak created “Fotomats” which were very small
buildings that would develop someone’s film photos within a couple days, and
could be picked up through a drive-thru window, avoiding the lines and the
hassle at photo departments and drug stores. The cutting down of this time made
pictures represent more of the present than the past.
An even bigger
advancement for film photography was the Polaroid “Land” camera. These cameras
made capturing and viewing images into consecutive events. There was no need to
wait for development then trying to meet physically with these people again so
they could view the image. It was all almost instantaneous. Eventually, this is
what digital cameras achieved with LCD screens, and it is another reason they
became so popular, because waiting was now obsolete. Eventually, Polaroid had
to file for bankruptcy in 2001, and again in 2008 because even though their
photos were “instant” for the time period, the sharing capabilities of a
printed Polaroid could not compare to the vast outreach of images produced on
digital cameras. With digital images, sharing now became easy and seamless,
especially with the rise of social media.
The social media
boom has taken over the internet, as well as people’s
lives. Everything from the mundane to the life-changing
can instantly be shared with anyone a user selects. This is especially true for
pictures. In May 2010, it was reported that the social networking website,
Facebook, received around 1 billion unique digital photos a week. This number
(roughly 52 billion a year) is equal to the global amount of photographs 13
years ago, (From Snapshots to Social Media, 142). This vast number of photos is
astounding, but these photos are not static; they are constantly being shared
across personal networks around the globe.
People are now
being connected in the present, as opposed to connecting people about past
events in the present. This instantaneous way of sharing, allowing images to
travel far and fast, give people the illusion that they can be in multiple
places at once. By connecting through images, it can reunite people who are
separated by physical space, and connect them to feel as if they are with the
person when the picture was taken.
Nowadays, pictures
taken with smartphone cameras are meant to be shared
instantly, and there are many channels to do this. Social media such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat
allow users to spread their story to whoever wants to see. Even multimedia
messaging (MMS) replaces the need to show someone a picture in person. By
sharing photos on social media, the in-person interaction of looking at print
photos is now obsolete. Why print a photo out when it can be seen by more
people in a faster amount of time online? Fewer and fewer photos are actually
being printed out. Many photos spend their entire lives only being viewed on a
screen. Not unless it is a very special or important picture will it be printed
out.
While it might
seem sad that photo prints are becoming a thing of the past, the immense
sharing abilities of digital photographs is something to celebrate. Photos no
longer show what happened in the past, but what is happening right now. An
image can act as a placeholder, by representing something in how it is right at
this very moment. It can give the viewer a feeling of connectedness to what is
going on in the picture and get a sense of what the other person is feeling.
Ordinary events
turn into things that require attention immediately. The everyday is
sensationalized and extraordinary. Whether it pops up on your newsfeed or sent
directly to you in a message, it is filling you in on what is going on in
places you cannot currently be. While these images do not have importance or
relevance for very long, it allows the viewer to feel connected and in-the-loop
with a virtual version of other people’s lives.
When Generation Y posts
photographs on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram,
they are doing this for two reasons. One is to connect with people who cannot
be present at the time of the image, as a means to interact. The second reason
is to build identity, whether this is through bragability
or interaction.
By bragability, I mean these social media users who are
competing for likes, comments, and shares. The more of these “interactive”
factors an image receives, the better a person’s online identity looks. They
appear to have lots of friends that care and want to know what’s going on in a
person’s life, and by interacting with these images, they hope their friends
will do the same thing in return.
If a picture is
posted, and there is no feedback or interaction on it, an image can feel
unimportant, not dynamic. This picture will quickly be forgotten unless it is
being interacted with. Today, a picture is only relevant as long as it is being
shared and talked about. Without this, it soon becomes a past memory, to be
forgotten until someone wants to share and interact with it again.
People also use
images as a means to show personal identity. An image can express anything from
who someone’s friends are to their favorite meal, to a
funny occurrence during their day. Any image can add to someone personal
identity, whether it be positive or negative.
Nowadays, it is very simple to build an online identity so people online might
know more about your day-to-day life then some of your friends you only see on
say a weekly or monthly basis.
The most important
picture someone can post on social media sites (like Facebook) is the profile
picture. This is designed to represent the user at that particular stage in
their life. One iconic photo to express themselves.
The cover photo also does this, but the most visible picture, in terms of the
rest of the site, is the profile picture. The choosing of the profile picture
is crucial because this picture is usually not updated daily, or even weekly
for that matter. These pictures have a tendency to show major life events, but
also someone having a fabulous hair day. This “definition of you” is what people
first see when they view one’s profile: a virtual first impression.
Identity cannot be
built unless it has someone to view it.
“Actions are always
joint, with the mutual response and adjustment of the actor and others
considered. The self is one that emerges not just from the individual, but with
how others see the person, and how the person responds to and develops his own
responses to this,” (Symbolic Interactionism, 2).
There is a difference between how
someone personally identifies themselves and how their
identity is viewed by the rest of the world. Having two different identities is
very feasible due to such strong sharing sites found on the internet,
especially social media sites. For Generation Y, “There is no self without
social interaction, so the self is flexible but also constrained,” (Symbolic
Interactionism, 5). The building of one’s identity is a constant process. It is
not static and requires frequent updating. With technology as advanced as it
is, people now have tendencies to overshare, putting
up pictures of everything from the mundane to the life-changing.
Online identities need to be just as alive as the people creating them.
Frequent posts, especially pictures, show that the person posting them has an
active lifestyle, and people should want to care about what they are doing
everyday. If someone is not constantly posting, it could seem like they are a
boring person, by today’s social media ideals.
It’s also not just
what you are posting, but who you are posting with.
With social media, jealousy and bragability are
apparent. “When you look at Facebook, you can see the same pattern at work:
people projecting their identities by demonstrating their relationships to each
other. You define yourself in terms of who your friends are,” (Quantifying
Culture, 3). How people know you is what they base their perceived identity of
you off of. By posting pictures with other people, your friends can view you as
someone who is popular, or become jealous because they themselves are not in
the picture. Just with one simple picture, it can change someone’s perception
of you, for worse or for better.
With
the “Photos of You” album on Facebook, this acts as a collection of images of a
particular user and whom they interact with.
“Ask any Facebook user – if you want to get a visual
impression of someone’s life from Facebook, you do not look at the user’s
albums. Instead, you click on a link the site provides to the aggregate album
of every picture tagged with the user’s name. The aggregate provides a far more
comprehensive overview of an individual’s social circle and activities than any
other album format,” (The Impersonal Album, 3).
This
tool can sum up a user’s social interactions all on one page. Tagging pictures
of someone provides definitive proof that a person was at an event and
interacted with the others tagged in the photo as well. There is no need to
explain who someone’s friends are when they can simply look at who is tagged in
their pictures with them. Their offline identities are already shaped simply by
who they interact with, and take pictures with that
are posted on social media sites such as Facebook.
Also,
through tagging, this is another way to interact with pictures online and
increase its social currency. Having several people tagged in a photo can
symbolize a big and important event, or simply that the user likes to be
social. By having more people tag, comment, and like photos, it increases its
social currency, which in turn, makes someone more interesting and exciting
online. This might not match their offline personality, but on Facebook, they
are symbolized as extremely popular.
A Case Study: Instagram
In 2011, Instagram had 5 million users with a picture database of
over 100 million images (How Smartphones are Changing Digital Photography, DPReview). This was only when the app was 8 months old.
Since then, the amount of data has increased to amazing levels, numbers
unfathomable ten years ago. This isn’t the only app either. Hipstamatic,
Facebook, and Tumblr also deal with massive
quantities of photos. But why are these sites and apps so popular? The shareability and connectivity.
As soon as a picture is taken with a smartphone device, it’s a couple screen
taps away from being shared all across the world. The production process can
all be done without having to sit down at a computer, download images, then edit them. A picture taken on a compact-camera has lag
time before it can be viewed. With smartphones, taking the picture, cropping,
filtering, and sharing can all be done on one device, within a matter of
minutes.
With these
pictures shared on apps such as Instagram, how
“valuable” are these images? It’s doubtful that the average user will be
posting newsworthy photos, or a photo that will impact a wide audience. These
pictures only mean something to people in the user’s social circle.
The pictures
though, act as a type of “social currency” online. These pictures have value,
and the value is recognized when other users interact with it. Interactions can
be liking a photo, commenting on it, or sharing and
re-posting it. The more interactions a picture has, the higher value it will
have for the person who posted it. This makes it a “good picture.” This idea of
good is a relative term, and for someone outside the poster’s social circle, it
might have a lower value. A picture of someone’s lunch on Instagram
with a fun filter probably won’t be winning any outstanding photography awards,
but the picture is still important and treasured by the amateur smartphone
photographer. A photo’s value is now all relative.
While photographs can now be shared far and wide in a small amount of time, its
outreach might not be as large as it seems.
Nir Eyal, author of “Hooked: How
to Build Habit-Forming Products” concocted reasons on why Instagram
and photo-sharing became so popular. He believes that:
·
The act
of taking a picture: "Capturing images has been habit-forming
for over a century. This anxiety that we feel if we don't capture this moment
it will disappear forever."
• The immediate
reward: "Part of Instagram's genius
is providing these filters. Now that shitty picture that I used to take on the
native app of my phone looks decent, sharable."
• The investment made by the user: "The
ultimate secret is that if you make your pictures more beautiful, that
increases the likelihood that you participate in the most important part of the
Instagram hook, the investment of sharing that
picture."
• Soon, Instagram
becomes the default: "Every time I see something I want to
capture, I capture with Instagram as opposed to any
other solution, as opposed to the native app on the camera."
• It becomes a
rather intimate social network: "Over time, there's successive
cycles through the hook. It's not just about capturing the moment,
Instagram is also a social network. So now the
internal triggers become boredom, seeking connection, FOMO [or fear of missing
out]."
• And you'll never
want to miss out again: "FOMO is huge reason to use Instagram. Not just to take pictures, but this fear of
missing out on the moment. And my solution to alleviate that pain point, that
psychological itch, is to open Instagram and scroll
through," (Baer, The Psychology behind Why Instagram
is Addicting).
These reasons can be true for other
social media tools besides Instagram. Generation Y
have a need to share, to interact, and to be included. Apps like Instagram satiate this desire.
While the everyday
is sensationalized in images, pictures still aim to do the same thing: tell
what happened. They show an experience, whether this experience happened five
seconds ago, or five years ago, it aims to portray a space in time. Photos
taken in today’s age are usually used to show what’s going on right now, as a
way to connect people who are not with the photographer. It aims to unite
people, but it can also create jealousy. By posting a photograph on Facebook of
an exciting moment being lived right now, it might separate the person from who
they were trying to connect with. It can create a wall of jealousy, and repel
people as opposed to connecting people.
Photos
can now be a channel for people to brag. This idea of bragability can be one reason Generation Y wants to post
and share pictures so frequently. It can be a way to one-up their friends or to
instill jealousy. By posting exciting experiences that others might not be able
to participate in, it can show what a person is doing in their life, but also
show that their life is more interesting or more exciting than someone else’s,
and that’s why they keep posting. Posts can be reminders to followers to show
who lives a more exciting or dynamic life, when in reality,
those who share less might have a more interesting life because they are not
constantly online.
This then leads to
the debate of whether someone should live in the moment or capture it, a
defining dilemma with smart phone photography. An amateur photographer takes
their GoPro or DSLR with them because they plan to
take pictures for a planned activity. With smartphones, the camera is not its
main function, and people usually have their phones with them at all times.
When happy accidents occur, everyone takes out their smartphones and feels a
need to document the unexpected occurrence. Instead of living in the surprise
of the moment, a person views the experience through a 4-inch screen.
“Is it more
important that we actually live these experiences than obsessively record and
upload them to the cloud?” asked William Powers, a research scientist at the
M.I.T. Media Lab and author of “Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in
the Digital Age.” “Absolutely. Will most people therefore learn to be more in-the-moment and swear off excessive pictures and videos? I
doubt it,” (Williams, A Defining Question in an iPhone Age: Live for the Moment
or Record it). Today’s social media world encourages over-sharing, whether it
be with everyday, surprise, or unique life events, such as traveling.
For travel
photography, as a result of quick, portable, easy-to-use cameras, especially
smartphone cameras, photos now say “Here I am” when it used to be “There I was.”
By showing and sharing pictures in real time, it bridges the gap of separation
between viewer and photographer, making it a shared experience. Which is nice
for the viewer who could be thousands of miles away, but for the photographer,
traveling should be a unique and personal experience. People often travel in
order to get away or to find themselves. This is not possible if you’re
documenting your trip’s every moment for the entire
world to see. The experience no longer becomes unique and intimate to the
photographer.
When people post
images of their travels on social networking sites such as Facebook, they are
able to be selective in what they post. They want to post the pictures that
will cause the most “interaction” with it. This can be anything from page
views, to likes, to comments. The photographer wants to show off and brag about
how their travels are; anything to help their self-image .
But the photographer is also trying to connect with people who cannot be
traveling with them. What used to be thought of as private moments for the
traveler, when he or she was the only one who could experience them, now his or
her friends who are miles away can see and share the same experiences online.
Smart phone
photography has allowed the entire world to be seen through a 4-inch screen, in
real-time. A feat that sounds incredible and amazing. But with so much sharing
taking place, can privacy still be respected and treasured? If a picture is
taken, and it was not shared with anyone, is it important? This is a modern day
take on the tree falling in the woods question. Photos have always been taken
to share with other people, but people used to treasure private photographs.
Family albums would not be shared with wide audiences, because the pictures
were usually only relevant and important to the people in the photos. Now,
Generation Y believes their virtual presence needs to be as dominant as their
off-line presence, by sharing everything online. Their pictures are now taken only to be shared with as many people as
possible. Everything from the mundane to the life-changing
is posted online.
While the
photojournalism business is all about public pictures and product distribution,
it is the nature of the field to share news and provide information to the
world. Private pictures have no relevance in the news industry, unless they are
leaked photos for a juicy story. But it is simply the nature of photojournalism
for images to be shared. What then, is the reason for teenagers to post every
picture they take?
Photographers vs. Photojournalists –
Can you have one without the other?
Camera technology
has gone through several changes since it was first invented. Now, cameras can
be put in so many different electronic devices from computers, laptops, cars,
and especially cell phones. Smartphone camera technology is so advanced that it
now rivals professional-quality cameras, and can fit in your pocket. While this
new technology is incredible, everyday citizens now believe that they can be
photographers (or more importantly, photojournalists), just because they have
access to seemingly the same technology.
Everyone with a
camera can be a photographer, but just because someone has the technology does
not make them a photojournalist. Having a camera in
one’s hands does not automatically give someone the skills and knowledge to be
a successful photojournalist. Jim Lo Scalzo, a photographer
for EPA, believes that, “The average smartphone photographer is under no
obligation to tell the truth, or be objective, or serve as a public watchdog.”
So while an average person with a camera phone might be first on the scene for
a breaking news story, they can take a picture, but they do not have the
knowledge and skills to capture the story.
For current
photojournalists, smartphone camera technology has helped them report more
quickly and dynamically on stories. Photojournalists can upload pictures taken
on phones quickly to be shared for breaking news, and then follow-up with more
in-depth, high-quality images later. In a news world so concerned about speed
and instantaneity, getting a story out in almost-real time is helped by
smartphones.
When
Hurricane Sandy struck the Northeast, Time Magazine’s director of photography, Kira Pollack, made the decision to have 5 regional
photographers on scene to use their smartphones to capture the destruction from
the hurricane. Pollack gave them all access to the magazine’s Instagram account, and told them to post their pictures
there. This was an experiment for the news source, but they believed it was the
fastest method for getting the information out to the public. The collection of
photos appeared in Time’s photography blog, called Lightbox,
and it was one of the most popular photo galleries Time has ever done. This
gallery led 13% of the site’s traffic for that week, and its Instagram account attracted over 12,000 new followers
within 48 hours (Why Time Magazine Used Instagram To
Cover Hurricane Sandy).
Benjamin
Lowy, one of the Time photographers whose iPhone photo made it onto the cover
of Time said,
“For years, I have
worked with bulky digital cameras, always mindful of the technical maneuvers
from setting the shutter speed and aperture to editing and toning on a computer
screen. In the last few years I have discovered that my iPhone has allowed me
to capture scenes without feeling that I am once again on the job. To “point
and shoot” has been a liberating experience. It has allowed me to rediscover
the excitement of seeing imperfections and happy accidents rendered through the
lens of my handheld device,” (Jeff Bercovici, Why
Time Magazine Used Instagram To Cover
Hurricane Sandy).
This experiment proved to be
extremely successful for Time magazine, and other news sources have used Instagram for similar purposes. War photographers have used
Instagram and Hipstamatic
to document their experiences while in close quarters with American troops,
giving citizens back home a chance to see up close and personal accounts of the
war. Using smartphones allows these images to be shared faster than using a
traditional DSLR, then downloading them to a computer.
For Lo Scalzo, using phones as cameras
cannot replace the traditional DSLR cameras. “Though cell phone imagery may be
the first coverage we get from a breaking news story, I don’t believe that
coverage will dominate the news, but rather supplement it. We are talking about
a very small, niche market, and one entirely dependent on luck.” Cell phones
can certainly assist for covering news, but it should not be considered a
dominant source just yet.
Companies like
Samsung, Sony, and LG are not only advertising their phones as thinner and
lighter, but that their phone cameras are more
powerful than ever before. Smartphone cameras now have the ability to edit depth
of field after a picture is taken with special software. This was a key
difference for DSLR cameras, which create depth of field through lens aperture
while a picture is being taken.
While all these
features in smartphones seem to be bridging the gap between phone cameras and
DSLR’s, the camera sensors will always be more powerful than in phones, because
of size alone. The bigger the sensor, the thicker and bigger the camera needs
to be. So in terms of picture
quality, the DSLR will win out for the forseeable
future, but DSLR’s lack in something smartphones thrive on: speed and shareability.
Gary Cameron, a
senior photo editor at Reuters, believes that there is a difference between
being first and being professional. Just because an average citizen was on the
scene first does not make them a journalist. Nowadays, the content of a picture
isn’t always as important as the speed an image can be shared; quality has been
replaced by quantity. When all photojournalists used film cameras, with a
limited amount of exposures, they would have to think first, then capture. With
a plethora of storage space, photographers can now capture an image and think
later. Cameron believes that the photojournalism world is now focused on the
concept that, “It’s not how good it is, it is how quick it is.” While speed has
always been a dominant part of the news, with inter-connected technology across
the world, it is even more crucial that news can reach wider audiences in
shorter amounts of time.
Conclusion
Even though
someone owns a camera, this does not make them a
photographer, and it especially does not make them a photojournalist. These
professions take training, skill, and a photographic eye that cannot be
learned, only gained through practice. Taking photographs is one thing, but
taking outstanding, appealing images is another. Photographers have to try
harder to create these stand-out photos, just because
of the sheer abundance of images out in the world today.
Photojournalists
have a responsibility to produce images that inform and spark feeling.
Professor Harvey, an Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs at the
George Washington University and an Associate Director for the Center for
Innovative Media, believes that the average picture taker aims to “capture the
moment, not wow the world.” Generation Y posts photos to share a particular
instance as a representation of themselves. While instead, photojournalists and
professional photographers aim to inform and excite, and take the most compelling
pictures as possible. So while the threat of amateur photographers taking over
the news isn’t as terrifying, considering their motives for taking photos vary
greatly from those of experienced photojournalists. Their thought processes
differ, putting them on different levels of how wide their photo outreach would
be.
With
all-new camera technology filling the shelves, these electronics are no longer
photo-centric, but sharing focused. It is not the picture itself that is so
crucial, but how fast it can be shared and spread. The main
purpose of an iPhone is not the camera feature, it is
the phone feature. But the reason iPhone cameras, or any smartphone
camera for that matter, are so popular, is because of how easy and fast it is
to share photos with other people. The cost to reproduce it
for sharing purposes is non-existent because the image remains digital its
entire life. Not unless someone chooses to print it out, but by doing
this, it will have a smaller outreach than if someone shared it on social media.
Print photos are now passé, along with treasuring photos among generations.
Photos no longer serve as a tool for remembrance, but as a means to digitally
represent someone in a particular time in space.
While the future
is uncertain for photojournalists, it is uncertain for these digital images as
well. Physical photos have withstood the tests of time, but digital images rely
on technology to survive. The future of the JPEG is just as uncertain as
professional photographers. No one knows if a JPEG will still be accessible in
twenty years from now, and no one knows what new technology will bring in terms
of shareability and entertainment. In the meantime,
people will still take pictures for what they were meant to do: capture the
moment.
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