(An excerpt from a photo article by Ken Rockwell from his website)
By the 1980s, color print photography had become inexpensive enough that hobbyists shot color print film, and had it developed and printed by a lab.
This was too bad, because no one ever got good colors, since color printing is entirely subjective, and every film needs different printer settings.
Others shot color slides, as they had since the invention of Kodachrome in the 1930s, and got the colors they intended.
With color, only the most insane hobbyists developed or printed their own work , so it all got sent to the lab.
Thus the photography as a hobby centered entirely around the acquisition of cameras, lenses, and filters by the 1980s.
By the 1990s, photography equipment had evolved to its highest state.
We also saw the introduction of digital photography to consumers.
By the mid to late 1990s, "digital" meant scanning your film and playing with it in your computer.
Digital cameras were primitive. The first practical DSLR, the Nikon D1, didn't ship until Christmas 1999, and all the other digital cameras were Mavicas and 1.2MP wonders.
A very bad thing happened to the hobby by the late 1990s.
Men were increasingly drawn away from photography, and model trains, and everything, into computers.
Why?
It wasn't about the computers. It was because the computers started to talk to each other, as the Internet became adopted by consumers.
When computers could receive information from other computers, that meant that computers were now pornography portals to the world
. Men could get their porn instantly, and even better, it evaporated instantly as soon as the wife or girlfriend or mukhabarat came around.
Pornography, and plenty of games and other distractions, now pulled men away from photography and into their computers. Even if no one admits to it, someone is spending 100 billion dollars a year on pornography alone, even before we factor in video games.
I'm dead serious: the photography hobby almost died in the late 1990s and very early 2000s.
I was a sales manager for a huge television and movie studio equipment company in Hollywood in those days. I decided it might be more fun to drive around with a half-million dollars worth of photo demo gear in my trunk instead of the post-production studio gear I sold.
I asked around at Hasselblad, Canon and Nikon, and the reply was the same. Sales were down, and dropping even more. No one was hiring. As others left, they were not rehiring. The sales forces were shrinking by attrition, hoping that things wouldn't get much worse.
Why? Simple: even with pro gear, the biggest consumers are rich hobbyists. There are a lot more rich people than there are pro photographers.
As hobbyists spent more time on the Internet instead of in the darkroom, or out shooting, no one was buying new cameras the way they had been for over 100 years.
Things were grim. I stayed in TV, and then quit to do this website full-time in 2004.
The photography hobby was back with a vengeance by the mid 2000s.
Digital saved the hobby.
By pure dumb luck, digital photography recaptured all the guys who went away to play with their computers.
With digital cameras, it was trivial to get your pictures into your computer, and then to play with them in your computer until you went blind.
Today the photography hobby has retreated almost entirely away from shooting, and gone back into the computer.
Just as most of the hobby was concerned with chemistry at its inception, few photo hobbyists worry about taking pictures anymore. Instead, it's all about Lightroom or Camera Raw, workflows, profiles, HDR or whatever.
Hobbyists actually believe that, armed with their computers, that they are now alchemists who can turn terds into great pictures. Artists can turn terds into art, but bad photos never get any better than when they were taken.
Hobbyists created photography. Sadly, hobbyists are usually too busy playing with the toys to create any meaningful photographs, just as Karl Benz never actually drove the car he invented.
If anyone doubts the foolishness of the current obsession with software shenanigans, have a look at an old photo magazine from the 1950s and see how much time was spent back then worrying about darkroom chemicals.
Today we look back at all that and can't fathom how using one chemical or another had any significance compared to how much more important it would have been to take pictures of something interesting.
Look at LEICA Photographie magazines from the 1950s, and it's appalling how awful are most of the featured photos. They all suck, except for the occasional ringer thrown in from someone like Eisenstaedt.
There were articles on topics like how to do color separation negatives, and when we look at the "good" and "bad" examples today, all we notice is "heck, one might be a better reproduction, but who cares, it's still an awful picture of weeds in someone's backyard!"
I see exactly the same problem today.
It's obvious looking back at old magazines that the only thing that mattered was getting to the right place at the right time to take a picture of the right thing, and the choice of developer and wash treatments, 90% of what the magazines went off about, was irrelevant.
Today, its the same thing. Magazines go off about how to "fix" your pictures in your computer, but let's face it: the only way to fix them is, as always, get to the right place at the right time and see the right picture before you press the shutter.
If you waste your time making 3,600 exposures from the same place to stitch in four dimensions, it doesn't matter how much spatial (gigapan and pan-focus) or luminous (HDR) range or resolution you have, if it's a picture of something boring.
If it sucks, who cares if it's GPS geotagged? LOL
By the 1980s, color print photography had become inexpensive enough that hobbyists shot color print film, and had it developed and printed by a lab.
This was too bad, because no one ever got good colors, since color printing is entirely subjective, and every film needs different printer settings.
Others shot color slides, as they had since the invention of Kodachrome in the 1930s, and got the colors they intended.
With color, only the most insane hobbyists developed or printed their own work , so it all got sent to the lab.
Thus the photography as a hobby centered entirely around the acquisition of cameras, lenses, and filters by the 1980s.
By the 1990s, photography equipment had evolved to its highest state.
We also saw the introduction of digital photography to consumers.
By the mid to late 1990s, "digital" meant scanning your film and playing with it in your computer.
Digital cameras were primitive. The first practical DSLR, the Nikon D1, didn't ship until Christmas 1999, and all the other digital cameras were Mavicas and 1.2MP wonders.
A very bad thing happened to the hobby by the late 1990s.
Men were increasingly drawn away from photography, and model trains, and everything, into computers.
Why?
It wasn't about the computers. It was because the computers started to talk to each other, as the Internet became adopted by consumers.
When computers could receive information from other computers, that meant that computers were now pornography portals to the world
. Men could get their porn instantly, and even better, it evaporated instantly as soon as the wife or girlfriend or mukhabarat came around.Pornography, and plenty of games and other distractions, now pulled men away from photography and into their computers. Even if no one admits to it, someone is spending 100 billion dollars a year on pornography alone, even before we factor in video games.
I'm dead serious: the photography hobby almost died in the late 1990s and very early 2000s.
I was a sales manager for a huge television and movie studio equipment company in Hollywood in those days. I decided it might be more fun to drive around with a half-million dollars worth of photo demo gear in my trunk instead of the post-production studio gear I sold.
I asked around at Hasselblad, Canon and Nikon, and the reply was the same. Sales were down, and dropping even more. No one was hiring. As others left, they were not rehiring. The sales forces were shrinking by attrition, hoping that things wouldn't get much worse.
Why? Simple: even with pro gear, the biggest consumers are rich hobbyists. There are a lot more rich people than there are pro photographers.
As hobbyists spent more time on the Internet instead of in the darkroom, or out shooting, no one was buying new cameras the way they had been for over 100 years.
Things were grim. I stayed in TV, and then quit to do this website full-time in 2004.
The photography hobby was back with a vengeance by the mid 2000s.
Digital saved the hobby.
By pure dumb luck, digital photography recaptured all the guys who went away to play with their computers.
With digital cameras, it was trivial to get your pictures into your computer, and then to play with them in your computer until you went blind.
Today the photography hobby has retreated almost entirely away from shooting, and gone back into the computer.
Just as most of the hobby was concerned with chemistry at its inception, few photo hobbyists worry about taking pictures anymore. Instead, it's all about Lightroom or Camera Raw, workflows, profiles, HDR or whatever.
Hobbyists actually believe that, armed with their computers, that they are now alchemists who can turn terds into great pictures. Artists can turn terds into art, but bad photos never get any better than when they were taken.
Hobbyists created photography. Sadly, hobbyists are usually too busy playing with the toys to create any meaningful photographs, just as Karl Benz never actually drove the car he invented.
If anyone doubts the foolishness of the current obsession with software shenanigans, have a look at an old photo magazine from the 1950s and see how much time was spent back then worrying about darkroom chemicals.
Today we look back at all that and can't fathom how using one chemical or another had any significance compared to how much more important it would have been to take pictures of something interesting.
Look at LEICA Photographie magazines from the 1950s, and it's appalling how awful are most of the featured photos. They all suck, except for the occasional ringer thrown in from someone like Eisenstaedt.
There were articles on topics like how to do color separation negatives, and when we look at the "good" and "bad" examples today, all we notice is "heck, one might be a better reproduction, but who cares, it's still an awful picture of weeds in someone's backyard!"
I see exactly the same problem today.
It's obvious looking back at old magazines that the only thing that mattered was getting to the right place at the right time to take a picture of the right thing, and the choice of developer and wash treatments, 90% of what the magazines went off about, was irrelevant.
Today, its the same thing. Magazines go off about how to "fix" your pictures in your computer, but let's face it: the only way to fix them is, as always, get to the right place at the right time and see the right picture before you press the shutter.
If you waste your time making 3,600 exposures from the same place to stitch in four dimensions, it doesn't matter how much spatial (gigapan and pan-focus) or luminous (HDR) range or resolution you have, if it's a picture of something boring.
If it sucks, who cares if it's GPS geotagged? LOL
