shaunarmstrong...indeed, a richer and more memorable experience does build longer-term credibility and taller spikes in peoples (overly full) consciousness.
DocumentallyWell said. Better than i could say it.
I meant to mention this raising of the bar with the saturation of the feeds with images. I am starting to ask more about the back story and the methods used. This may not be relevant in so many instances, especially as all this information passes out eyes in a blink.. Still, it adds another level of appreciation to the final story that is being shared.
dg28comThat's a really interesting analysis of the status quo in photography. I agree with a lot of what you say but the mobile phone camera is still half a dozen generations behind the best DSLRs when it comes to usability, flexibility and sheer image quality. There are times when an image - any image - will do. There are other times when a story requires so much more - interpretation of a scene without reliance on appalling and gimmicky apps and without that sense that all you have is a record of that scene.
Great photographers using iPhones and pocket sized compacts will still produce great images - Check out Carol Allen-Storey's World Aids Day project, al done on a previous generation camera phone. The ubiquity of the camera is a problem for some photographers but, for others, it means that we can get on with the business of working with light and composition and getting our work used prominently.
There are things that you can shoot with a mobile phone and there are plenty that you cannot. The best camera is indeed the one that you have with you but if you go to a major news event with the wrong camera you will just get pictures. Go with the right gear, the ability to use it to its fullest potential and the knowledge of ethics, the law and even health and safety and you will get pieces of journalism - often great pieces of journalism.
I'm bored of reading about how you can no longer trust a picture because "they have all been Photoshop'd" (yes, it has become a verb). It isn't true. That's the problem that we have: how do publishers, readers and the rest of us know when a picture is 'real'? How do we know that no laws were broken to get it? How do we know whether it was shot with all of the ethical standards that the best of us adhere to in mind? The answer is that we don't.
Professional photographers should be held to high ethical and legal standards. Their technical standards should be the highest too. There are times when any old picture will do but it is my belief that five years from now we will have come to realise that there is a greater need for verifiable and trustworthy pictures than there has ever been.
What happens when some wise camera manufacturer puts a SIM card slot into a high quality camera? That would be "game on".
play0:00 / 6:27The image accompanying this audio os of the first camera phone I had that made me want to take serious photos. It had 3 megapixel sensor ...
