Selfies, food, and filters oh my!
To simply say photography has changed would be an understatement. It has transformed into an almost unrecognizable medium.
From your laptop to your smartphone to your tablet—cameras are everywhere, ready to take a snapshot anywhere and at any time.
With the ease of access to both cameras and editing technology, however, the question is whether this mass quantity of photographs can still be of the same quality.
While every photo still has its own story, can we still say they speak 1,000 words?
A changing medium
The popularity of digital photography has changed how the medium is being used, according to professionals in the field.
“Before, it required a higher level of technical expertise without a doubt,” Dwayne Brown, an Ottawa-based advertising and corporate photographer with more than 20 years of experience in the industry said. “It’s opened things up. It’s a more forgiving art form.”
Digital photography has allowed more people to use the medium, even if they don’t have a handle on all of the specific technicalities, Brown said.
Brown is the founder of loveOttawa, a photography project where he seeks out city residents, asks them what they love most about the capital, and then photographs them.
He shares the collection of photos on various social media platforms such as his blog, Twitter and Facebook. Sharing photography via social media is a networking tool, Brown said.
“What it really is, is connecting people with people.”
From paper to profiles
Social media is also the platform many photographers of this generation use to publish their work, according to David Hlynsky, a senior lecturer of photography at the University of Toronto. He said photos posted online don’t have the same value as a printed photo.
“The things that you post on social media are very, very temporary. They fly out in the world and by this time next week they’ll be at the bottom of your Facebook newsfeed,” Hlynsky said.
Printed photos carry a certain history with them, he explained.
“You have a photo that has a fragile quality to it—it could get stained, it could get ripped, folded, lost,” he said. “Every time that happens to an object, it leaves a mark and accumulates a history.”
Online photos tell a different story though, he said, as they focus more on a present moment rather than one that has passed.
“It doesn’t make history as much as it makes the present,” he said.
The two forms of published photography make them different things, according to Hlynsky. “It’s a difference between a relic and an image,” he said.
Quantity vs. quality
With the abundance of photos circulating online at a constant rate, some are skeptical of the quality of photography being produced, Brown said.
He added the increase of people taking photos shows there are more people who are observing their environments from different perspectives.
Hlynsky agreed photography is still a true art form and is more than just a click of a button.
He explained two concepts make up photography: umwelt and punctum. Umwelt is the photographer’s own perspective of their photo and what they think it means. Meanwhile, punctum is the subjective nature that others view the photo and its meaning.
“In my observation those two things make photographs individualistic. That’s why we can call them art,” he said.
A new era of editing
Using digital software to edit photos has changed the finishing process of photography as well, Hlynsky said.
In a darkroom, photographers would have under half of a minute to decide whether or not to change the colour contrast of a photo. Now an infinite amount of time can be taken to edit photos, he said.
“Photoshop is where photography comes back and takes the discipline of painting,” he said. “Photographs aren’t really finished until the last file is produced, the last stroke made.”
Compared to a darkroom, Hlynsky said he prefers to use digital editing.
“I find sitting in front of a computer with all of my tools there a lot more satisfying. It’s much more fine tuning and much, much more subtle.”
In with the old?
At the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa, students are taught the use of both analog and digital photography, said Michael Tardioli, executive director of the school.
Many students, he said, show a keener interest in learning about analog photography.
“That seems to be attracting people because of the high level of production, working with your hands,” he explained.
The explosion of content being published on social media has also deterred younger students at the school from using it, according to Tardioli.
In contrast, he said, older students attending the school show an excitement for testing out those platforms.
“The youth are so bored from technology from what I see,” he said, noting many at the school choose to work with historical
printing instead, using different materials to publish their works on.
Many want to see their work fully carried out into print, he said.
A shifting craft
But no matter the level of experience or technique, everyone can still be a photographer said Hlynsky.
“Everyone with a camera can be a photographer—but there are different kinds of photographers,” he explained. When looking at a photo an observer can most likely determine what kind of photographer it was who took the photo, he said.
“You can see a lot of cultural information from them—something about the person, about the equipment, about the politics, and opinions,” he said.
Brown said a photo that says 1,000 words is one that is not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but also has the power to tell a story and represent ideas.
“More and more people are taking photos, really good photos . . . But to have a photo that’s really, really evocative—it still requires an excellent photographer,” Brown said. “The really great photographer can still make a photo say 1,000 words, others can do good imagery.”
