Mahn England asked yesterday, "How the hell did we ever manage to take photo images before the latest editions of hardware came along?"
The answer, of course, is that we worked harder. You could almost—maybe not quite—cast the entire history of photo-tech as a relentless march toward greater and greater convenience. Photography is so convenient these days that sometimes I have trouble concentrating on the most basic part of my job, which is to figure out where best to stand, what angle of view to use, and how to frame the picture. It was actually great for discipline to have to pay a few cents every time you pushed the shutter button.
As a late adopter of cellphones (quaintly thinking of them only as phones, instead of the amazing bundle of varied functionality a smartphone actually is...weather station, oral navigator while driving, electronic book, camera, reference librarian, and a thousand other things), I can't believe what a short time ago it was when the idea of taking a picture and sending it to someone immediately was an exotic idea to me, just a little difficult at first to get my head around. It had to be explained to me. I could probably find it in the blog, if I worked at it, and nail down the date. It wasn't that long ago. Now, I will make and send a movie in the middle of a conversation.
Convenience is good, of course. But of course, as with everything, you lose a little, too. Everyone is familiar with Ansel Adams's prognostications in the early '80s about "electronic photography" being the coming thing. They're not so familiar with his lamentations about photography getting too easy, and wishing it would somehow get harder to do. I don't think he'd be happy with that aspect of "imaging" today. Convenience sure is convenient, but mastery is also useful; learning something in depth pays off in ways that superficial facility (I mean "facile-ness") can't touch.
...There, now you've read enough of this and have got the gist. Now you can quick skip to the end to see if this article offers any morsel of conclusion that might be worth scooping up. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, eu per iuvaret quaeque mediocrem, meis nusquam ei his. Illum dolorum civibus te mel. Elitr invidunt ex quo, vel facilisi mandamus vulputate cu, qui essent neglegentur ea. Ad commune omittantur mei, possim conclusionemque nec at. Mel simul facilis omittantur cu, eum id decore albucius, enim esse volutpat ut has.
Ne vidit quando salutandi sea, ex has veritus accusamus. Et vim aeque omnes. Cum choro nemore perfecto ea, pri justo dicta corpora no. Eruditi reprehendunt an eam, dicat veritus nominavi ei sed, sed ea magna imperdiet. Nam tollit libris facilis ex, aliquam accusamus ut vel, vel et ipsum clita cetero. Ut vel apeirian detraxit, quo quaestio sapientem ex, an tale denique delicatissimi est.
Graeco voluptatibus cu sed, legere inimicus reformidans mel ei, per et fabellas forensibus contentiones. Vivendum sensibus euripidis mea an, alii inani pro te. Mea ut alia zril sadipscing, ne cum commune sadipscing. Odio probo omnes qui ad. Illud alienum eum et, vim mazim possim eleifend et.
Est dicant discere efficiantur an, ferri noster voluptatibus ne his. Duo eu nemore audiam. Prima vocent eam an, adolescens scribentur eu vim, impetus repudiare et pri. Cu recteque salutandi similique eam, saepe fuisset probatus quo ne. Per ex possim scripta dissentias, wisi nominati euripidis est in, dico mandamus electram ad pri. Graeco voluptatibus cu sed, legere inimicus reformidans mel ei, per et fabellas forensibus contentiones. Vivendum sensibus euripidis mea an, alii inani pro te. Mea ut alia zril sadipscing, ne cum commune sadipscing. Odio probo omnes qui ad. Illud alienum eum et, vim mazim possim eleifend et.
Te veniam doctus eos. No amet probatus sea. Sed te dolor commune, sed probo aliquip scripta eu, delenit assueverit sed ex. Populo cetero patrioque pro ex. Vix at summo recusabo maluisset, an cum augue legimus copiosae. Sadipscing reprehendunt ea eam. Dolore nostrud reformidans an mel.
You see what I did there. Now, anyone who reads half of this article has also read all of it! Perfect. The canny blogger wins. :-) Anyway, I'm certainly not saying that everyone should master everything. But it might be good advice for everyone to master something*.
Mike
(Thanks to Mahn England and Graham Byrnes)
*I pick salads. I'm going to master salads.
Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
TOP's links!
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
[Ed. Note: I'm featuring part of Graham's comment on this post even though he wrote it in response to yesterday's, because it speaks to the metatopic of this one, namely, the average surfer reading only half of articles they read on the Internet. Hope you don't mind, Graham.]
Graham Byrnes (partial comment): "'Many a statistician has drowned in a river whose average depth was only three feet.' If the average reader reads half of the average article, she probably reads all of 10% and only the first line of the rest. Why? Because internet articles are struggling desperately for clicks, and so they court controversy with inflammatory hypotheses. The reader gets sucked in, clicks through, realises there is no real content, and leaves. Occasionally, someone taps into an existing reservoir of passion, such as 'My Canon is bigger than your...errhh, Nikon,' and the small proportion of obsessives read to the end. And comment. And defend their comments, and so on."
Mike replies: Speaking of clickbait, one of my favorite quotes was something Jerry Garcia said after the release of the album "Shakedown Street," which sounded insufficiently Deadish and suspiciously poppish to some fans, when he was asked if maybe the band was selling out. He said, "We'd be happy to sell out, if only we knew how." I'd be more than happy to put up click-bait if it would draw a huge audience. Occasionally I try. I don't really know how.
Burt Porter: "Mike, the second half of your column today is complete nonsense, although I did learn the interesting history of 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.' As always, thanks for a thought-provoking bit of fun."
Mike replies: To quote the Lorem Ipsum Generator site: "Lorem ipsum is a pseudo-Latin text used in web design, typography, layout, and printing in place of English to emphasize design elements over content. It's also called placeholder (or filler) text. It's a convenient tool for mock-ups. It helps to outline the visual elements of a document or presentation, e.g. typography, font, or layout. Lorem ipsum is mostly a part of a Latin text by the classical author and philosopher Cicero. Its words and letters have been changed by addition or removal, so as to deliberately render its content nonsensical...."
Gordon Lewis: "In response to your response to Graham Byrne's comment, it's easy to generate clickbait as long as you don't let things such as conscience, standards, intellectual rigor, and critical thinking get in your way. Rid yourself of these obstacles and the clickbait content will flow like sewage."
Steve Jacob: Well, so much for average readers, I just found a translation of Cicero's original Latin from which Lorem ipsum was garbled.
Actually quite interesting and surprising relevant to the main topic of the post....
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness.
No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.
Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.
To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.
These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided.
But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.
Mike replies: See also John Seidel's comment in the Comments Section.
And did you know that in classical Latin, Cicero is not pronounced "SISS-uh-row," like Cicero, Illinois, but CHEE-chuh-row? True. Go to this link and click the loudspeaker icon under the right-hand word to hear it. [UPDATE: This might not be right. Several readers say in classical Latin it would be "KI- kuh-ro" with a hard "k," and that "CHEE-chuh-row" is Church Latin or modern Italian.]
The fun fact I learned today is that carrots were originally purple, and orange carrots are a relatively recent hybridizing development. Naturally, the purple carrots were better for you. Are we getting far afield?
Michael Barker replies to Steve Jacob: "Thanks for posting that vanilla lorem ipsum, but I must admit that I only read the first two paragraphs and then skipped to the end."
Sven Erikson: "Working with a large format view camera is one of the most rewarding, and also most frustrating, things I do as a photographer. It's all manual, it's slow, it's heavy, and every shot costs me $2 to $20 depending on the film. Some days it's worth it. Other days, it seems like a pointless anachronism, and I just end up missing good shots that I could have captured with my cheap DSLR and kit lens."
Herb Cunningham: "A good parallel is learning how to make furniture with hand tools before getting all the modern shop equipment. Those of us who started out 50 years and more ago can appreciate the need to pay attention to every detail. Yogi said: you can see a lot by looking."
Benjamin Marks: "Ugh. Keep TOP a Kardashian-free zone. Oops. Except now it isn't any more."
Mike replies: What's a "Kardashian"? A kind of scarf?
Roger Bradbury replies to Mike: "you don't know because you are not a science fiction fan, but Kardashians are an alien species in 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.' I hope this helps. ;-)"
Mark Kinsman replies to Mike: "It's an option available for pickup trucks as in, 'can I get it with the Kardashian option?'—also referred to as DRW (Dual Rear Wheels)."
Autipode: "How many have you made with a smart phone good enough to print large and hang on the wall or make part of your portfolio? Zip, for me. Maybe I only need a fancier smart phone. Right."
Mahn England: "Having been mentioned in dispatches I now feel duty bound to relate a story in which my 'mastery' was questioned. A friend who is an artist of the etching variety and I packed up the Land Rover and went bush for a weekend’s R and R. Having setup the camera on the tripod for some 'slow photography' I set about observing, composing and finally taking some shots. Meanwhile Nicky was sketching away. A couple of bushwalkers wandered past. One was carrying a camera. The camera-less one observed Nicky’s activity and turned to me and proclaimed that all I needed to do was press a button. The camera-carrying one looked aghast and I responded: 'not really.' Nicky had the good grace to say nothing. It looks easy but it isn’t because pressing the button is of course merely a small part of a process. Two shots from that weekend I printed and now hang on the wall."
Lenya Ryzhik: "I could not agree more. I remember vividly the arguments in the newspapers back in 1880s, with the introduction of Kodak. Things only went downhill from there. George Eastman killed serious photography."
dan: "Lorem Ipsum makes one hell of a mat print paper."
Rod S.: "I came to the comments section to say how much I enjoyed reading the featured comment by Steve Jacobs in which he provides the unadulterated original Latin from Cicero. That's amazing, and something to pursue further. But in doing so I was stopped dead by Ed Cornachio's beautiful prose in his 'comment' headed 'When?' ('Comment' is too banal a noun here). It brought tears to my eyes. That's something to keep and consider at length. Finally, Michael Perini summed up the problem with the ease of the New Photography succinctly. After pointing out the obvious benefits, he nails the big downside thus: The more 'casual photography' there is, the harder it become for some photography to be taken seriously. There will always be those who do whatever it takes to produce obviously great work and we are all better for their efforts. This discussion has personal meaning for me because my still-recent transition to 4x5" large format photography has been a total revelation to me. Thank you, Steve, Ed and Michael."
David Brown: "Taking pictures is easier than ever. Making good photographs is as hard as it ever was."
Mike replies: ...And that's a nice comment on which to wrap up the Featured Comments for this post. Thanks to all. That was fun.
