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Fascinating, thanks for sharing! I’ve gotta buy this book one day. The interview got a little goofy towards the end — I think we can all sorta guess what profes

by bbor 2y ago

Fascinating, thanks for sharing! I’ve gotta buy this book one day. The interview got a little goofy towards the end — I think we can all sorta guess what professional photographers think of digital cameras and Instagram filters, and it kinda felt off topic - but overall very heart warming stuff. I do like thinking of philosophers as a family… wonder how true that is today, in the midst of intensely empirical + results-driven academic culture. Reminds me of the Adler quote; What binds the authors together in an intellectual community is the great conversation in which they are engaged. In the works that come later in the sequence of years, we find authors listening to what their predecessors have had to say about this idea or that, this topic or that. They not only harken to the thought of their predecessors, they also respond to it by commenting on it in a variety of ways.

ygra 2y ago
> I think we can all sorta guess what professional photographers think of digital cameras and Instagram filters, and it kinda felt off topic I guess the camera is »just« a tool to the photographer. If their job requires certain things that can be done more efficiently with digital photography (e.g. sports – there was an article here recently about how photography was done at the olympics), then I'm fairly certain they tend to choose the better option. However, for more artistic things like his portraits, I guess it makes little difference. Probably similar to a carpenter who just likes working with hand tools instead of power tools. Personally I like my SLR camera and dread going to mirrorless eventually (or I have to upgrade as long as DSLRs still exist) – at the current point I still feel weird about looking at a screen and not directly through the lens. I also like having all the settings and knobs to turn to control the exposure. And all that is more a preference thing because it's a hobby for me that's fun and I am not bound to any particular results or cadence thereof. There's a series on YouTube, Pro photographer, cheap camera. I was impressed at how usable photos can still come out of essentially trash cameras. But perhaps that's what a professional photographer's skill is: Taking a tool, considering what it can do (and what it cannot) and planning the shot accordingly
- throwanem 2y ago
  Partly that, and partly the other thing. The tool can inform the work; I have a cheap junk Sears-brand lens from 1975 that does magical things with light and color, and I have shots I could not have imagined making before I discovered what that lens could do. (I'm studying lens repair just lately so I can fix its stuck aperture! This tool is worth a whole skill to me, to keep working properly.) It isn't a professional photographer's skill, though, but a photographer's one. Anyone who tells you he's a photographer and can't talk intelligently about these tradeoffs, about the selection of constraints to fit the intent of the work and vice versa, he's lying to impress you and probably don't let him hand you a drink.
keiferski 2y ago
You might be interested in what Nick Knight, a well-known photographer, thinks about cameras and other, newer devices. The TLDR is that he feels that "photographer" is increasingly an outdated term, and he ought to be called something like "image maker" instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPummP8Vfyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPummP8Vfyk
- ninalanyon 2y ago
  > ought to be called something like "image maker" instead. Surely that is what photographers always have been? A photographer in the sense of the article is an artist. The image is created by the photographer using the tools of his trade, the camera, the film, the dark room. Now a photographer uses scanners, digital cameras, and software but I don't see that the essence of artistic photography has changed. What would Knight call a portrait painter?
  - keiferski 2y ago
    He means a specific thing by "image maker," which he talks about in the video.

by bbor 2y ago

ygra 2y ago

> I think we can all sorta guess what professional photographers think of digital cameras and Instagram filters, and it kinda felt off topic I guess the camera is »just« a tool to the photographer. If their job requires certain things that can be done more efficiently with digital photography (e.g. sports – there was an article here recently about how photography was done at the olympics), then I'm fairly certain they tend to choose the better option. However, for more artistic things like his portraits, I guess it makes little difference. Probably similar to a carpenter who just likes working with hand tools instead of power tools. Personally I like my SLR camera and dread going to mirrorless eventually (or I have to upgrade as long as DSLRs still exist) – at the current point I still feel weird about looking at a screen and not directly through the lens. I also like having all the settings and knobs to turn to control the exposure. And all that is more a preference thing because it's a hobby for me that's fun and I am not bound to any particular results or cadence thereof. There's a series on YouTube, Pro photographer, cheap camera. I was impressed at how usable photos can still come out of essentially trash cameras. But perhaps that's what a professional photographer's skill is: Taking a tool, considering what it can do (and what it cannot) and planning the shot accordingly

throwanem 2y ago
Partly that, and partly the other thing. The tool can inform the work; I have a cheap junk Sears-brand lens from 1975 that does magical things with light and color, and I have shots I could not have imagined making before I discovered what that lens could do. (I'm studying lens repair just lately so I can fix its stuck aperture! This tool is worth a whole skill to me, to keep working properly.) It isn't a professional photographer's skill, though, but a photographer's one. Anyone who tells you he's a photographer and can't talk intelligently about these tradeoffs, about the selection of constraints to fit the intent of the work and vice versa, he's lying to impress you and probably don't let him hand you a drink.

keiferski 2y ago

You might be interested in what Nick Knight, a well-known photographer, thinks about cameras and other, newer devices. The TLDR is that he feels that "photographer" is increasingly an outdated term, and he ought to be called something like "image maker" instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPummP8Vfyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPummP8Vfyk

ninalanyon 2y ago
> ought to be called something like "image maker" instead. Surely that is what photographers always have been? A photographer in the sense of the article is an artist. The image is created by the photographer using the tools of his trade, the camera, the film, the dark room. Now a photographer uses scanners, digital cameras, and software but I don't see that the essence of artistic photography has changed. What would Knight call a portrait painter?
- keiferski 2y ago
  He means a specific thing by "image maker," which he talks about in the video.