but – flikr seems somewhat like giving typewriters to a million monkeys

type in any date to receive an aggregate of the various “most popular” photos in flikr –
Im sorry but anyone who thinks the small folk cant reach the height of the pros is deluded – you have been officially “crowdsourced”

So I program my cell-phone to ring twice at random during the day (I do this weeks in advance so that I will not remember when it is going to ring). Then when it rings I take a picture of something around me. I haven’t had time to analyze the images yet, but just the exercise of doing it has made me think a lot more about my environment.

So it is a little like a panopticon, as Ben notes, but one in which you are also observing yourself; it’s self-normalizing.

I’ve also noticed that “graphic” is in the eye of the beholder. US papers and news websites would never dare go to the level of gore you see regularly in other parts of the world. Many Arab-language news services have published very gory pics, usually of civilians hurt by Americans and Israelis, but occasionally sectarian Arab violence as well. And in India – well, I can barely begin to describe the gore I’ve seen in Indian papers and news sites. I’m still haunted by a photo gallery of pics following a school blaze that killed dozens of children. One pictured featured a sobbing teacher slumped on the ground, sitting in front of a pile of charred corpses.

The reason I mention this, horrifying as it is, is that the photo quite literally haunts me. Sometimes it just pops into my consciousness; sometimes it’s appeared in my dreams. Quite literally I feel like I was scarred by it, traumatized by it – and there are a handful of other photos I’ve seen over the years that’ve done the same to me. The most recent occurance was last year, while visiting a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana, when a young man ran up to me and shoved a pack of photos in my face, graphically depicting a Liberian who had been found that day, murdered and mutilated.

Pictures like this are taken all the time, and usually they don’t make it into the American press. Sometimes there are moments when the use of graphic photos or videos are used to convey the sheer horror of a situation, such as the string of decapitations that occurred in Iraq a while back. The challenge, though, is balancing an editorial desire for fomenting public anger in the hopes of some kind of policy change or social outcome (condemning terrorism, cracking down on unsafe school buildings, etc), with lurid sensationalism. There’s a fine line between the two, and it seems to vary from context to context, perhaps even from culture to culture…. -andy

“War is an acid test for photography. It deals with life and death, and possesses great drama. Yet it raises questions about what pictures can and should be made, and what pictures can and should be seen. What does it mean to take a picture of someone being shot, or of dead bodies? What does it mean to want to SEE such pictures?”

I am curious how others feel about the ‘uncomfortable curiousity’ photographs allow the viewer. Censorship is current and now. Photographers are still having their camera’s taken. They are still arrested and held suspect. They are also victims, even while they attempt to photograph the experience of victims. Do we have a right to censor what can come at great peril and personal effort because we deem it inappropriate? Thank you for your consideration.

http://www.femmenoir.net/main/images/ATT00664-thumb.jpg

Please visit the following link for a synopsis of Kevin Carter’s story:

http://www.kevincarterfilm.com/synopsis.html

As always in the current age, the biggest problem is a surfeit of information and a dearth of useful ways to find what you want. Forget artistic merit and social/ethical concerns, people need to start thinking about meta-data. Categorization and labeling schemes are going to become increasingly vital as the volume of images increases.

The most significant coming change in the practice of photography?

DECIDING WHAT’S IN THE PICTURE. (and how to communicate that information to others)

In a way this is a much deeper philosophical issue than either the question of artistic merit or questions of ethics. Let’s talk epistemology before we make big leaps into anything else.

Also – if we’re talking digital photography, what about the issues raised by digital photo-manipulation? Is an photograph less “artistic” or does it loose epistemological status if it is digitally manipulated? What does it mean to create an image that accurately represents something in the “real world”?

The second most significant coming change in the practice of photography?

Authentication: how do we, the viewing public, determine which images in fact accurately represent reality? Who or what do we trust to do such a thing?

I believe if the first issue is dealt with properly one of the byproducts is that the second will be resolved. As increasing numbers of people have digital recording devices of some kind and use them more and more frequently, deep categorization systems along with search applications designed to sort through attached metadata will enable users to validate digital information such as photographs by checking it against other information, either corroborating or disconfirming its validity. Reality by democracy.

Anyway, just a thought. I would say more about the artistic/ethical implications of such a system but this post has run on long enough.

The overall experience of creating images bears striking similarities to writing. The more you do it, the better you get. Studying the work of the masters is rewarding and beneficial. Exercises and steady practice will generally improve your craft. The more we create and communicate directly through images, the more sensitive we become to the breadth of possibilities, the nuances of technique, and the unspoken falsehood at the heart of photography.

A novice looks at photography as a mirror on the world. Experienced photographers knows that this is a lie. There are so very many choices to be made when capturing an image, and so many forms of compression and filtering that occur in the path from the real world to a flat page with carefully arranged dots of pigment. We can’t help but throw things away and keep other things, making them more important than they were.

I am a novice photographer and it shows–and that’s okay. I love being able to enhance my blog with photos that I’ve taken. I feel like a full-service content provider. Shaping a story with words is one thing, but photos take the story to the next level.

If we continue to carelessly throw all manner of perception, whether in print or in pixel into the social soup, what happens to the consistency and flavour of the broth?

Without allowing the space and time for the psycho-spiritual juices to simmer, what is left to deliver flavour to life’s course?

Maria.

I am also facinated by the social and economic side effects of this and would enjoy listening to your findings. There are many digital Web communities, some of which have grown into million dollar industries. And it should be noted that these Web communities have thousands of users, from around the world. Women from many different countries sharing and conversing on a daily basis, thanks to this common interest in photography, and the ability to journal and capture every moment of their families’ lives in print– for all the world to see. It’s just amazing!

In addition to the upside, what are the negative aspects? Are health issues– weight gain, lack of excercise, depression, etc., being caused by so much time at the computer– processing digital image after digital image? Is there an addictive component to this new love affair with digital photography? Lots of room for discussion here!

Please consider adding this to your list for further research, as it relates to your topic of photography. I will certainly tune it!

Thank you,

Juli

Professional photographers have been sharing/arguing rules and ideas in forums like those at for years now. Amateur photographers post images that rival or surpass those of professionals. Fans rally behind those whom they like and depending on their mood change opinion at the click of a mouse. Images are shared or “borrowed” without so much as a wisper of thanks — nevermind copyright.

• What makes a professional photographer and is their work more valuable? To whom?
• Does this movement to self edification or digital communication make us more or less aware of our environment and the human condition? If so, are we doing anything to improve it?
• With earbuds in our head, Razors on our hip, and everyone flashing away are we actually communicating with one another? Is anyone listening?
• What influence does this have on privacy? Is everyone and everything fair game?

I finally made the switch to digital in 2003 to document a trip to Oman and the UAE, and have had a hard time turning back. I love my old Canon EOS Rebel, but always dreaded waiting for my pics to be developed. Now with digital, Ansel’s axiom is thrown out the window, because you can preview your pics as you go and know whether you’re on the right track, whether you’re wasting your time, whether you got the gem you were looking for.

When flickr entered the picture, everything changed, because it embraced the beauty of tagging and social networks to let people connect with each other, whether through a group of like-minded shuttrbugs, or through the pleasure of searching individual tags to see who else has photographed the same thing (or at least come up with the same tag for whatever reason).

As of this evening, I’m just a little shy of 9,000 photos on Flickr. So far I’ve been able to document every step I’ve taken while traipsing the world, captured the absurdly adorable moments of my cats, and encapsulated the wonder of becoming a father last month. And because Flickr’s a community, all the people who care about me or the things I care about can join me for the ride, sharing a little bit of themselves along the way.

In don’t know which pro’s you’re talking about. I do studio dance and nude photography and I take my time setting up each shot, getting the lighting and pose just the way I want it. I pay enough for the models and the equipment; I’m not going to waste it by shooting away at random.

My father shot Kodachrome slides and black-and-white negatives back in the 1930’s and 1940’s that are still perfectly fine today. They’ve survived in shoeboxes with no technical intervention from aunts and uncles and sisters.
That’s because the silver-based photographic technology is remarkably stable and can still be viewed or scanned in 2006.

But that won’t be true for any of our digital technology. Magnetic media degrades after only a decade or two, depending on temperature. Optical media’a lifetime is unknown – it may be somewhat longer, though there’s no way to know for sure – “accelerated aging” tests require guessing ahead of time what the most likely failure modes are and the optical storage industry’s track record is none too good there.

And anyway, the technology will become obsolete long beforwe the media decays. I had research data from college recorded on DECTAPE – just try finding a DECTAPE reader at your local CompUSA, and even if you could, where would you find the software to decode it? Whatever people are using for data storage in 20 years, it probably won’t resemble CD/DVD’s. Maybe it will be little holographic cubes or something and your kids would need to go to a computer museum in 30 yeas to see your Kodak Photo CD’s. And in 50 years? And what about the image formats? Good ol’ JPEG will probably seem like Amiga IFF’s by then.

The only reliable way to ensure all this stuff goes forward with us is to have the active, involved intervention of committed geeks to keep copying our images onto the The Next Big Thing before the last big thing is too far gone. And that just AIN’T gonna happen for a lot of people’s photographic shoeboxes. So a lot of social history will be lost.

Now when I use my camera I rarely pose anyone or anything, because I’m not trying to get something perfect the first time to preserve film. I just take a bunch of photos and choose the best one.

That said, one thing I hate about Flickr is that people who aren’t good photographers take lousy pictures of you and post them online. At SXSW I heard Heather Champ say, “well, you don’t want to post pictures of your friends not looking good, because it’s just not polite.” Well, that’s a future that’s not evenly distributed yet ;->

Just reading the words, which one is the juicier story?

But it was the one with pictures that went somewhere.

And the pictures were only available because of the ubiquity of the $250 pocket digital camera.