The B&H Photo YouTube Photography Channel has some excellent Event Space videos where professional photographers come in and talk about their style of photography. Some of them are about as exciting as watching the Wallabies Vs Argentina but some of them are quite insightful. I’ve stopped watching them and most other photography YouTube Channels, but if you’re into learning about photography B&H has some good stuff. After watching this video from B&H, where the speaker (who has done several talks for B&H), I was completely put off by the state of digital photography and the thousands upon thousands of videos about gear.
To me, this is not photography. You might as well just take a video and grab a screenshot (which is actually now a thing). My 4 and a half year old could take 70,000 photos and get enough good ones to send to Sports Illustrated. I’m not exaggerating there. If this is where Photography is, and it is, it’s a pretty sad thing and this one of the many reasons I choose to shoot primarily film.
Yes, I have shot on burst mode before when it’s needed but what a complete pain in the ass that was sifting through the hundreds of photos to get the one good one. Yeah, they need to get the shot, but does it really take 70,000 frames to get it, how bad a photographer do you have to be to take 70,000 images to get a few good ones? You’re probably saying this is the reality today, and you may very well be right. This is just further proof that the photography industry today is a complete crock of shit. You’ve got people calling themselves photographers who couldn’t tell you what aperture is. I saw one camera review last year where the camera could take video and you could pull a 10MB image out of the footage to get yourself a photo – this is literally what photography has become, people taking stills from video. I guess if that’s your thing, by all means do it but don’t call it photography and don’t ever call yourself a photography if you do that!
As I mentioned, I guess this is the reality today but to me, that’s taking all the skill and reward out of photography. “Hey Mum, I shot 70,000 images, look at the good one I got”!. For fucks sake, how rewarding is that?! Perhaps I just don’t get the point but I’m not one of these hipsters who ONLY shoots film and shuns technology. This is photography in it’s lowest form. Actually photography in it’s lowest form is the dude with the iPad taking photos of models at car shows. Anyway, there’s no real moral or lesson behind this post, just my opinion on the state of Photography and another reason for you to try film and experience what it’s like to get an awesome photo from 36 shots shot on a 30 year old camera with everything done manually.
More on other YouTube Photography Channels here.
