6 ms·

Photography’s Third Act

66 points by jordanbrown 14y ago

justhw 14y ago
A bit out of context but, Who is Dustin Curtis? None of his sites mention anything beyond him being a villain and a superhero. Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning his authenticity or relevance. But his posts usually end up high here on HN and generally the authors whose posts reach high have a bio page reachable. He is relevant and he created svbtle, but that's all I know. And I do respect his privacy, if he chose.
- untog 14y ago
  TechCrunch credits him as a "widely read designer". So I have no idea either.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- hnriot 14y ago
  He created svbtle - a private blogging platform http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/forget-todays-drama-dustin-curtis-svbtle-is-trying-to-push-blogging-forward/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/forget-todays-drama-dustin-...
  - hnriot 14y ago
    why downvoted? This is factually correct, unbiased and, I thought, a little helpful.
    - untog 14y ago
      Probably because the original post states "He is relevant and he created svbtle, but that's all I know."
- citricsquid 14y ago
  He's a talented designer and a couple of his blog posts were relatively well talked about a few years back (eg: http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html) and he capitalised on that. From what I understand of him he's not had any individual achievement that people care about but it's his ability to write with confidence that gives the impression he has a rich history of experience in all these many fields and so people choose to listen to him. The site that he originally published articles through (http://www.dustincurtis.com http://www.dustincurtis.com) is worth a look just for the quality of the design. Probably his most effective post (the one that most people will have experienced the effects of) is this: http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter....
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    The site that you reference is nothing but a placeholder that says "I now write at dcurt.is".
    - citricsquid 14y ago
      Works for me: http://i.imgur.com/M7PZy.png http://i.imgur.com/M7PZy.png
      - FireBeyond 14y ago
        Ah, so he's doing UA sniffing then, I suspect. If you're using IE, even 10, you're not worthy of his blog. Nice design attitude.
        weenaak 14y ago
        I'm using Chrome on a Mac and it doesn't show up for me either.
- iamwil 14y ago
  He did a couple of things. Svbtle aside, he was the first guy I know of to tell people to follow him on twitter at the end of every blog post. The practice has subsequently spread to the rest of the web. http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.... You can see his submissions over time on HN to get an idea of how he's known in this community. http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=dustin+curtis&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=dus...
- seiji 14y ago
  It is odd. A quick (naïve) google search returns no relevant pictures for the name either. I remember a long time ago his twitter description was something to the effect of: "I'm 23 and advise startups." What great wisdom would an (unverifiable) unemployed 23 year old have for startups? He's no Irish marathoner. Everybody is an "idea person" but it's not worth squat until you do something (more than wireframes or simulations) with your life. Have we considered it's a joke? A simple joke a first, but over time grown sentient. Maybe there are multiple people in the cabal of Dustin Curtis: designer, over-generalizing pontificator, and website engineer. Elite trolling for people who already think they are better than everybody else. A Fox News commentator of startups, except most people are in so deep they can't see the deranged minds behind the narrative. Does Dustin Curtis interact on any platforms beside twitter and his own website? nickb taken to a whole other level?
- damian2000 14y ago
  For some reason I get him and Dalton Caldwell mixed up. Its not the same person is it? http://daltoncaldwell.com/ http://daltoncaldwell.com/ They are both from SF far as I can tell.
  - zainny 14y ago
    Heh, I just realized I do as well :-) I think it's primarily a consequence of using svbtle -- all the blogs look the same. And this is the high point of design apparently...
- peteforde 14y ago
  The first rule of Dustin Curtis is you don't ask about Dustin Curtis.
dzuc 14y ago
Thinking about an expanded definition of photography: I've been experiencing this often with the combination of instant screenshot uploading apps (CloudApp, Scrup, et al.) in combination with realtime chat.
aeturnum 14y ago
Photographs have been used for communication for a long time. Most artistic criticism is focused around the efficacy with which a photograph transmits an idea or message. Look no further than 2/4chan for an implementation of a "picture as message" service. I think someone could create a more structured service than the 'chans, but I don't know that I'd call it photography's "third act."
msutherl 14y ago
I use iMessage for this. It works great. It could be better. It works better than having a separate app I have to switch to. It works better than having to ask my friends to install an app that they have to switch to. Still, I love that feeling of playing with a truly novel technology for the first time with a few friends, especially when it's presented in the raw with few extraneous features. There's a feeling of excitement and exploration that seems to decay in a year's time at best.
- saurik 14y ago
  Exactly: what he is describing is almost identical to "group MMS". The one thing he seems to have different is that he is against having words at all, but once you are taking pictures of words you really should just support it as a feature: the essential property he is against is really just that the words need to be equal to the pictures (as in, a chat where you can post either a picture or words, as opposed to a place where you post pictures and then "comment on them" using words), not below/about the pictures. If the only problem with MMS is then that it is expensive, well: iMessage solves that.
jberryman 14y ago
> When photography was first becoming popular, it was mostly used as a form of artistic expression. No, it was mostly used for portraiture and things you could generalize as journalism. Photography as an accepted fine art is a pretty recent thing.
- jacobolus 14y ago
  The sentence you’re responding to is silly, but your comment is also completely off the mark. Photography was used, among other things, for demonstrating medical conditions, for mugshots (and compositing many photos to capture a “scientific” “type” of different sorts of criminals or members of particular social classes), for scientific imagery, for understanding movement (Muybridge & al.), for propaganda (well beyond “journalism”), for faddish semi-scams (like the famous “spirit” photographs), for documentation of people and places (with types of photos it would be quite a stretch to call either “journalism” or “portraiture”), for making reproductions of other types of art, and yes, for fine art in itself (there were huge debates about whether photography counted as “art” going right back to the beginning, with the pictorialists e.g. famously making their images out of focus or otherwise blurry, scratched, etc. so that it could be “art” instead of a purely mechanical process). Indeed, nearly all of the uses of photography date back to the 19th century, they just weren’t as widespread as today.
  - jberryman 14y ago
    Most of what you've named are what I meant by "generalized as journalism", i.e. as objective documentation of one form or another. I was just trying to point out that art as self-expression wasn't and has never been photography's primary "use". Good point though.
    - 001sky 14y ago
      This is still prety far off base, historically. The most important contemporary art (as a genre) right now is photography. Its most popular movement, loosley called the 'New Topographics.' The 'origins' of 'topograpgic' photography, as a style, date well back into the 19th century, however. I think that says enough.
antiterra 14y ago
I had a difficult time reading this article, because it provided no source or argument for: "When photography was first becoming popular, it was mostly used as a form of artistic expression." Which completely ignores how photography displaced painting in the genre of portraiture, and made it more accessible. Then Mr. Curtis explains haughtily that communication is the new use for photography and that of course is an entirely different thing from artistic expression. In fact, artistic expression is bad because it inhibits us! I highly doubt the majority of people using Instagram are engaging in a visual language of symbol and metaphor (oops, that sounds like communication!) So we have it that communication is better when it's easier and we are no longer shackled by the editorial desire to not produce a bunch of junk. Now, Mr. Curtis says, we can communicate that we like the hit television show Breaking Bad by taking a photo of our screen with a thumbs up! What a glorious age we live in.
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  Yeah, I have to agree. Photography can be used as a communication tool now, thanks to Treehouse and Snapchat? Thanks, Mr Curtis, for the insightful wizardly pronouncement to the masses. I'm sure photojournalists of the last 100+ years will be pleased to know that there now is a reason or platform for their efforts. Seriously? Curtis lauds people writing a comment on a scrap of paper, taking a photo of it as a means to circumvent the lack of a commenting system on a website and hails it as "Photography's Third Act"? Wow, just... wow.
  - _feda_ 14y ago
    You're glossing over the author's solid point on the nature of design, that over-engineering can stifle creative input. In the example he provides, the users became distracted from the purely photographic form of communication by a text-based one.
    - ivv 14y ago
      I like a related point I think he makes: that adding a feedback mechanism to a photo site turns the site from being about photography to being about feedback. In other words, it moves from being a site where people post photographs they like to a site where they post pictures they think others will like.
FireBeyond 14y ago
"Snapchat... . It’s an amazing app, and its insane popularity is just a hint of how I think we’ll use photos in the future." Myself, and a quick survey in the room, of a bunch of various tech, and for that matter photography types - not one had heard of, let alone used Snapchat...
- jmduke 14y ago
  To add a counterpoint; everyone in college uses SnapChat.
  - zainny 14y ago
    To add another counterpoint; not everyone in college uses SnapChat.
- duck 14y ago
  Same here (I thought it was something he made up, but I was wrong - http://www.snapchat.com/ http://www.snapchat.com/) and weirder... since he didn't link to it, and just kind of mentioned it out of the blue, I thought I missed the part where he told me more about it. I read it again and found I was wrong once again.
- ebf 14y ago
  Well considering Snapchat isn't necessarily aimed at photography types and assuming you are older than the demographic that it is blowing up in (12-20 year olds), it makes sense that you haven't heard of it.
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    Certainly possible, plausible, and I'm more than willing to be corrected!
brown9-2 14y ago
Photographs have been used in newspapers as a form of communication for over a century.
davecap1 14y ago
Seems like the cargo culting of a successful social media startup.
akaru 14y ago
This app is pretty clearly about dick pics and has nothing to do with photography. This article is just the author patting himself on the back for running a sexting social network for preteens. Yeah, great job, buddy.

66 points by jordanbrown 14y ago

A bit out of context but, Who is Dustin Curtis? None of his sites mention anything beyond him being a villain and a superhero. Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning his authenticity or relevance. But his posts usually end up high here on HN and generally the authors whose posts reach high have a bio page reachable. He is relevant and he created svbtle, but that's all I know. And I do respect his privacy, if he chose.

untog 14y ago
TechCrunch credits him as a "widely read designer". So I have no idea either.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
hnriot 14y ago
He created svbtle - a private blogging platform http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/forget-todays-drama-dustin-curtis-svbtle-is-trying-to-push-blogging-forward/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/forget-todays-drama-dustin-...
- hnriot 14y ago
  why downvoted? This is factually correct, unbiased and, I thought, a little helpful.
  - untog 14y ago
    Probably because the original post states "He is relevant and he created svbtle, but that's all I know."
citricsquid 14y ago
He's a talented designer and a couple of his blog posts were relatively well talked about a few years back (eg: http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html) and he capitalised on that. From what I understand of him he's not had any individual achievement that people care about but it's his ability to write with confidence that gives the impression he has a rich history of experience in all these many fields and so people choose to listen to him. The site that he originally published articles through (http://www.dustincurtis.com http://www.dustincurtis.com) is worth a look just for the quality of the design. Probably his most effective post (the one that most people will have experienced the effects of) is this: http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter....
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  The site that you reference is nothing but a placeholder that says "I now write at dcurt.is".
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    Works for me: http://i.imgur.com/M7PZy.png http://i.imgur.com/M7PZy.png
    - FireBeyond 14y ago
      Ah, so he's doing UA sniffing then, I suspect. If you're using IE, even 10, you're not worthy of his blog. Nice design attitude.
      - weenaak 14y ago
        I'm using Chrome on a Mac and it doesn't show up for me either.
iamwil 14y ago
He did a couple of things. Svbtle aside, he was the first guy I know of to tell people to follow him on twitter at the end of every blog post. The practice has subsequently spread to the rest of the web. http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.html http://www.dustincurtis.com/you_should_follow_me_on_twitter.... You can see his submissions over time on HN to get an idea of how he's known in this community. http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=dustin+curtis&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=dus...
seiji 14y ago
It is odd. A quick (naïve) google search returns no relevant pictures for the name either. I remember a long time ago his twitter description was something to the effect of: "I'm 23 and advise startups." What great wisdom would an (unverifiable) unemployed 23 year old have for startups? He's no Irish marathoner. Everybody is an "idea person" but it's not worth squat until you do something (more than wireframes or simulations) with your life. Have we considered it's a joke? A simple joke a first, but over time grown sentient. Maybe there are multiple people in the cabal of Dustin Curtis: designer, over-generalizing pontificator, and website engineer. Elite trolling for people who already think they are better than everybody else. A Fox News commentator of startups, except most people are in so deep they can't see the deranged minds behind the narrative. Does Dustin Curtis interact on any platforms beside twitter and his own website? nickb taken to a whole other level?
damian2000 14y ago
For some reason I get him and Dalton Caldwell mixed up. Its not the same person is it? http://daltoncaldwell.com/ http://daltoncaldwell.com/ They are both from SF far as I can tell.
- zainny 14y ago
  Heh, I just realized I do as well :-) I think it's primarily a consequence of using svbtle -- all the blogs look the same. And this is the high point of design apparently...
peteforde 14y ago
The first rule of Dustin Curtis is you don't ask about Dustin Curtis.

dzuc 14y ago

Thinking about an expanded definition of photography: I've been experiencing this often with the combination of instant screenshot uploading apps (CloudApp, Scrup, et al.) in combination with realtime chat.

aeturnum 14y ago

Photographs have been used for communication for a long time. Most artistic criticism is focused around the efficacy with which a photograph transmits an idea or message. Look no further than 2/4chan for an implementation of a "picture as message" service. I think someone could create a more structured service than the 'chans, but I don't know that I'd call it photography's "third act."

msutherl 14y ago

I use iMessage for this. It works great. It could be better. It works better than having a separate app I have to switch to. It works better than having to ask my friends to install an app that they have to switch to. Still, I love that feeling of playing with a truly novel technology for the first time with a few friends, especially when it's presented in the raw with few extraneous features. There's a feeling of excitement and exploration that seems to decay in a year's time at best.

saurik 14y ago
Exactly: what he is describing is almost identical to "group MMS". The one thing he seems to have different is that he is against having words at all, but once you are taking pictures of words you really should just support it as a feature: the essential property he is against is really just that the words need to be equal to the pictures (as in, a chat where you can post either a picture or words, as opposed to a place where you post pictures and then "comment on them" using words), not below/about the pictures. If the only problem with MMS is then that it is expensive, well: iMessage solves that.

jberryman 14y ago

> When photography was first becoming popular, it was mostly used as a form of artistic expression. No, it was mostly used for portraiture and things you could generalize as journalism. Photography as an accepted fine art is a pretty recent thing.

jacobolus 14y ago
The sentence you’re responding to is silly, but your comment is also completely off the mark. Photography was used, among other things, for demonstrating medical conditions, for mugshots (and compositing many photos to capture a “scientific” “type” of different sorts of criminals or members of particular social classes), for scientific imagery, for understanding movement (Muybridge & al.), for propaganda (well beyond “journalism”), for faddish semi-scams (like the famous “spirit” photographs), for documentation of people and places (with types of photos it would be quite a stretch to call either “journalism” or “portraiture”), for making reproductions of other types of art, and yes, for fine art in itself (there were huge debates about whether photography counted as “art” going right back to the beginning, with the pictorialists e.g. famously making their images out of focus or otherwise blurry, scratched, etc. so that it could be “art” instead of a purely mechanical process). Indeed, nearly all of the uses of photography date back to the 19th century, they just weren’t as widespread as today.
- jberryman 14y ago
  Most of what you've named are what I meant by "generalized as journalism", i.e. as objective documentation of one form or another. I was just trying to point out that art as self-expression wasn't and has never been photography's primary "use". Good point though.
  - 001sky 14y ago
    This is still prety far off base, historically. The most important contemporary art (as a genre) right now is photography. Its most popular movement, loosley called the 'New Topographics.' The 'origins' of 'topograpgic' photography, as a style, date well back into the 19th century, however. I think that says enough.

antiterra 14y ago

I had a difficult time reading this article, because it provided no source or argument for: "When photography was first becoming popular, it was mostly used as a form of artistic expression." Which completely ignores how photography displaced painting in the genre of portraiture, and made it more accessible. Then Mr. Curtis explains haughtily that communication is the new use for photography and that of course is an entirely different thing from artistic expression. In fact, artistic expression is bad because it inhibits us! I highly doubt the majority of people using Instagram are engaging in a visual language of symbol and metaphor (oops, that sounds like communication!) So we have it that communication is better when it's easier and we are no longer shackled by the editorial desire to not produce a bunch of junk. Now, Mr. Curtis says, we can communicate that we like the hit television show Breaking Bad by taking a photo of our screen with a thumbs up! What a glorious age we live in.

FireBeyond 14y ago
Yeah, I have to agree. Photography can be used as a communication tool now, thanks to Treehouse and Snapchat? Thanks, Mr Curtis, for the insightful wizardly pronouncement to the masses. I'm sure photojournalists of the last 100+ years will be pleased to know that there now is a reason or platform for their efforts. Seriously? Curtis lauds people writing a comment on a scrap of paper, taking a photo of it as a means to circumvent the lack of a commenting system on a website and hails it as "Photography's Third Act"? Wow, just... wow.
- _feda_ 14y ago
  You're glossing over the author's solid point on the nature of design, that over-engineering can stifle creative input. In the example he provides, the users became distracted from the purely photographic form of communication by a text-based one.
  - ivv 14y ago
    I like a related point I think he makes: that adding a feedback mechanism to a photo site turns the site from being about photography to being about feedback. In other words, it moves from being a site where people post photographs they like to a site where they post pictures they think others will like.

FireBeyond 14y ago

"Snapchat... . It’s an amazing app, and its insane popularity is just a hint of how I think we’ll use photos in the future." Myself, and a quick survey in the room, of a bunch of various tech, and for that matter photography types - not one had heard of, let alone used Snapchat...

jmduke 14y ago
To add a counterpoint; everyone in college uses SnapChat.
- zainny 14y ago
  To add another counterpoint; not everyone in college uses SnapChat.
duck 14y ago
Same here (I thought it was something he made up, but I was wrong - http://www.snapchat.com/ http://www.snapchat.com/) and weirder... since he didn't link to it, and just kind of mentioned it out of the blue, I thought I missed the part where he told me more about it. I read it again and found I was wrong once again.
ebf 14y ago
Well considering Snapchat isn't necessarily aimed at photography types and assuming you are older than the demographic that it is blowing up in (12-20 year olds), it makes sense that you haven't heard of it.
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  Certainly possible, plausible, and I'm more than willing to be corrected!

brown9-2 14y ago

Photographs have been used in newspapers as a form of communication for over a century.

davecap1 14y ago

Seems like the cargo culting of a successful social media startup.

akaru 14y ago

This app is pretty clearly about dick pics and has nothing to do with photography. This article is just the author patting himself on the back for running a sexting social network for preteens. Yeah, great job, buddy.