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Agree on the nice historical summary. The end of the final paragraph struck me in particular: “My photos are a collaboration between me and the algorithm desig

Agree on the nice historical summary. The end of the final paragraph struck me in particular: “My photos are a collaboration between me and the algorithm designers and camera manufacturers, and they reflect a combination of aesthetic decisions made by each of us.” The one downside of taking pictures with such a strongly opinionated technology is that your pictures are going to look like everyone else’s (or increasingly just weird). Ansel Adams developed his darkroom technique over decades - and as the author mentions, applying them took hours of meticulous labor. So his output really did look different from most other peoples’. You can still differentiate your photographs on the basis on their subject matter, of course. But if everyone is shooting out of the same algorithmic pipeline, making your pictures look better technically is going to be increasingly hard. (And given current limitations, someone knowledgeable in the field today can still usually tell the difference between photographs taken with good lenses carefully deployed and cell phone output. But it’s unclear how long that will be true.)

goldenkey 5y ago
Lenses can be added to cell phones through 3rd party attachments. And aren't these ML options able to be turned off? It should make the phone camera much more like a standard camera.
whoisburbansky 5y ago
Doesn’t the same criticism apply to the aesthetic choices baked into film? It seems to me that the amount of technical expertise it takes to post process a phone-captured RAW file in Lightroom compares favorably to the amount of expertise it would take to have a physical dark room and tools to dodge and burn. If anything, it seems to me that it’s gotten easier to master the tools necessary to make your pictures look technically better.
- quartesixte 5y ago
  Yes and for during the height of the film era what film stock you chose, along with your choice of push/pull on the stated ISO levels, was part of any project’s aesthetic choices. It is immensely easier to do in light room what previously took hours in a dark room and years to master. We can now spend more time thinking about specific aesthetic choices and less time making test strips of 1 stop intervals on a small strip of the sky to correctly dial in exposure. That’s a process that can take a very long time, involve lots of chemicals, and expose you to some carcinogens. I love film photography but it is laborious.

goldenkey 5y ago

Lenses can be added to cell phones through 3rd party attachments. And aren't these ML options able to be turned off? It should make the phone camera much more like a standard camera.

whoisburbansky 5y ago

Doesn’t the same criticism apply to the aesthetic choices baked into film? It seems to me that the amount of technical expertise it takes to post process a phone-captured RAW file in Lightroom compares favorably to the amount of expertise it would take to have a physical dark room and tools to dodge and burn. If anything, it seems to me that it’s gotten easier to master the tools necessary to make your pictures look technically better.

quartesixte 5y ago
Yes and for during the height of the film era what film stock you chose, along with your choice of push/pull on the stated ISO levels, was part of any project’s aesthetic choices. It is immensely easier to do in light room what previously took hours in a dark room and years to master. We can now spend more time thinking about specific aesthetic choices and less time making test strips of 1 stop intervals on a small strip of the sky to correctly dial in exposure. That’s a process that can take a very long time, involve lots of chemicals, and expose you to some carcinogens. I love film photography but it is laborious.