[Britboy71]

When I first picked up a camera it could take days, agonising days, to discover if any of the photographs you took came out as you wanted. Now you can take a multitude of pictures, of whatever, and then photoshop into the picture you wanted to take. Each shot was important, you had to take care and that is still my philosphy towards capturing a moment, even now. Maybe i'm just old, I never developed any of my old stuff, but I believe in only editing my digital images to a minimal degree. To enhance what I saw not make a new picture. I would prefer to sit there and not take a picture and regret it than take 700 and go, oh that one looks nice! I believe it is not about how many you take, but about the one you take that stands out... I leant a friend my old film camera, after a couple of weeks they complained that they could not afford the processing fees as they had takien so many pictures. My point was lost, the volume wasn't important, it was the content that was important. I'd rather go "Damn, I wish had pushed the button just then, but oh well"
Photographers older than about 7yo will understand......

[wullemaha]

Now you can take a multitude of pictures, of whatever, and then photoshop into the picture you wanted to take. Each shot was important, you had to take care and that is still my philosphy towards capturing a moment, even now

I think I understand the emotional state you are coming from. But I think it's not as bad as you believe. First off, you cannot easily just "photoshop into the picture" anything that you missed, especially when we are talking about "that moment". Sure, nowadays a lot of crazy postprocessing is done (looking at the HDR-crowd), but not all of it is bad. I myself really discovered I like to do my own post processing from RAW files rather than relying on in-camera-jpg settings. But since I do postprocessing on my PC, I take much less pictures, spent more time actively LOOKING at them, delete any that are "hopeless", and generally try to improve how I take pictures.

Also, in the last few years, the hipster crowd has re-discovered that "old stuff is cool", so many young people go back to shooting film!

Sure, if you take a look at facebook/twitter/whatever, you will see millions of snapshots that are not really "artsy", but on the other hand digital photography has made it much easier to get good quality pictures with less effort/budget, which gets some people interested, and they may develop into really great photographers!

Just my 2 cents - always sometimes look on the bright side of life

[JimC1101]

Yes, there are two types of photographers, maybe even more but there are actual individuals who compose, determine DOF and actually put some thought into their photos, and then there are the new shooters who are just snapshot shooters, and spray and pray DSLR photographers who are just learning out. DSLR;s have become so affordable that any novice can shoot pics now, and actually they can make some very good shots just out of camera. I don't know if a majority of new users don't use PS as much as you might think, because they don't understand how to use it or they just don't want to take the time anyways. I could be wrong. I will admit, back in '98 when I really got into digital photography, I used PS a lot because it was to me, well, impressive what you could do with it. Now, I use LR to make RAW adjustments and that is pretty much it. I try to keep technique in mind when I am composing a pic I want. I don't what to take 100 pics that I would have to process it because that is too time consuming so I try to make it what I want maybe in just a couple of composures. That again is just me though.


Yes, Photography has changed a lot just in the last 10-15 years. Before, no one would spend the time or money to actually get a DSLR. Now most everyone has a camera in their phone, and I don't know that is a good thing or not, it seems to me that a majority of the internet is not that good, mostly selfies all the time. I don't think film shooters shot selfies that much but I could be wrong. I think the cream will settle to the top and those who really get into the art of photography will stick to it and learn from it as we do. There will a passion among them just as it is with us, and they will begin felling the same you do as saying about the art they love.


Just my opinion.

[Macario]

I do not think the art has gone out of photography. Now it is just much easier to do it than it used to be (for a part).
you really have two sides. the one side that hates PP, and always say they want to show how it was (which is impossible) when they took the photo. And the side that does lot of PP, one way or the other.

And when I take myself as an example. I take a lot more pictures than with film. But then again, why not. With film you had to choose between subjects, because your film did run out. Now you don't have to. You can photograph all the subjects you want (well almost, memory cards will fill up also). And then for PP, I do not do much more than I used to in film days, but it is still alot. Dodging, burning, cropping, selective contrast. All the things I also did in the darkroom. Could spend up to an hour to get a picture right. Yes in the old days, there was alot of PP being done, and I mean alot. I have knonw examples of pictues that took days (weeks) to get the result. Which now can be doen in a few minutes (hours).

So no I do not think the art has gone out of photography, the process steps have just changed

[BATMON]

The H has.

[geomez]

Is a poem any less a work of art if it goes through a thousand rough drafts? Is a film any less a work of art if a scene is shot a thousand times before the director gets the scene she wants? Is a dance any less a work of art it is practiced a thousand times before the dancer "sticks it" the way they want? Is a photograph any less a work of art if a scene is snapped once or a thousand times before the photographer is satisfied?


NO


Art is art.
A work of art is still a work of art regardless of the amount of work it took to produce.

[Dartmoor Dave]

It's just Sturgeon's Law in action: 98% of everything is crap.

In the pre-internet world, a photograph would only appear before the public if an editor somewhere had decided it was worth publishing in a magazine or newspaper or book. There was a filtering process that removed most of that 98% of crap before anyone got to see it.

Nowadays anyone can publish any snapshot at the press of a button, so we all have to climb the mountain of crap ourselves in search of the occasional beautiful rose at the summit. The 2% of good stuff is still out there, you just have to look for it a lot harder.

[magkelly]

You need to look around this forum and at some of the galleries, at some of the quality work done by our members. I honestly don't think that anyone could do that and come away still asking that question. Yes, there are a lot of snapshots, and occasionally even some really crappy photography too. (Yes, I cheerfully include myself in that rather blunt assessment. Some of my least stellar photography has been posted here for all to see.) There is some really breathtaking work here too, work that definitely qualifies as art.

It's the person behind the camera that makes photography art or not, and yes, there are plenty of photographic artists left in this world who take the time to try to make their photographs special. That doesn't mean though that dumb luck can't play a part in the making of a spectacular photo. It surely can. More than once I've sat there for hours trying to get just the shot I wanted and gotten absolutely nowhere. I've finally given it up and started shooting randomly just to shoot, and "Et voila!" there's my PERFECT photo as I wanted it gotten simply because I did take 30 random shots while trying to get my mojo back....

Photography like any art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, as the saying goes, usually that's very true, but not always. :P

[MacUK]

When I first picked up a camera it could take days, agonising days, to discover if any of the photographs you took came out as you wanted. Now you can take a multitude of pictures, of whatever, and then photoshop into the picture you wanted to take. Each shot was important, you had to take care and that is still my philosphy towards capturing a moment, even now. Maybe i'm just old, I never developed any of my old stuff, but I believe in only editing my digital images to a minimal degree. To enhance what I saw not make a new picture. I would prefer to sit there and not take a picture and regret it than take 700 and go, oh that one looks nice! I believe it is not about how many you take, but about the one you take that stands out... I leant a friend my old film camera, after a couple of weeks they complained that they could not afford the processing fees as they had takien so many pictures. My point was lost, the volume wasn't important, it was the content that was important. I'd rather go "Damn, I wish had pushed the button just then, but oh well"
Photographers older than about 7yo will understand......

I do recall with amusement a competition winner in Practical Photography (British magazine) some years ago. The photographer shot off six rolls of slide film of a parrot at a zoo to get 'the one'.
A winning shot, but at some cost!

[Rondec]

There was an awful lot of film shot that just turned into snap shots and not art. It's just that there weren't sites like facebook and flickr around to show everbody.

To me, photoshop is a tool. It won't turn a bad photo into a good one, but it can improve exposure, cropping, and enhance details.

I don't know how much photography ever has been art. I take photos of the world. I try to frame them in such a way that is appealing and then edit them to bring out what I think I saw. But I don't necessarily think that is art. Be that as it may, I think digital has changed the tool kit, but the same struggles are there.

[Bob from Aus]

Answer No

Same number of skilled photographers - just more people shooting up

[Pablom]

FWIW there were plenty of photojournalists that used to shoot very large quantities of film just to dig up 1 or 2 out of 1000.

OTOH, from my experience, the less I photograph the higher the keeper rate is.

[magkelly]

There was an awful lot of film shot that just turned into snap shots and not art.

It always amuses me that people think that using digital vs film automatically means you're taking more shots. Some people do take hundreds of shots every time they go to shoot, even with film. Some people shoot digital and they come home with maybe 2 rolls worth of digital shots. Every photographer is different that way. I can take 200-300 shots per shoot and honestly not be just taking pics at random. Every now and again I will resort to that just as a way to keep on shooting when I am out of inspiration and I want to work through that, but mostly I'm thinking very hard about what I want to shoot and not doing much of that at all. But I can still come home with the digital equivalent of six rolls of film some days. FYI, my keeper rate is pretty high compared to most photographers, or so I am told.

The only reason I shoot less when I shoot film is because it costs me $8-10 a roll now to process negatives, because the only film lab here in town charges obscene rates for that and because I don't happen to have a darkroom set up. Digital, film, it's all the same to me now. I still go through the same process basically when using either. I think shooting film does slow me down even a bit more sometimes, makes me think just a little bit harder, a good thing, but I still think about every shot even when it's a digital cam. The only major difference is that it's a memory card I'm using and not a film cartridge.

I've had good teachers. I had teachers that insisted I learn to do it the right way, format notwithstanding. I think that has a lot to do with it, with how I shoot. A lot of people they never even read the manual for their cameras let alone learn to properly use them. Technology does make a lot of us lazy photographers, but it really shouldn't. The tech is there for a reason, and all of it can be a valuable tool, but in the end it's the person behind the camera that matters. No amount of post processing can save a truly crappy photo. It's like putting gourmet Belgian chocolate icing on a play dough cake. It might look like the real thing, but it's still not palatable, and on some level you will know that. I can always tell when someone has actually given learning how to use their camera properly a shot and has succeeded in actually becoming a real photographer vs a person who just uses a camera sometimes.

There's a world of difference. There are billions of snapshots out there, some good, some bad, but the real photography it stands out. It is absolutely art, and it moves me utterly at times. Photographers, real ones, those people, and the inspiration of their work, that's why I do what I do. That's why I picked up a camera in the first place. To try to learn to express myself via this art form. That being what's "art" can be rather subjective. What "I" think of art and some snooty pretentious gallery owner might think qualifies are often two very different things...

[wildman]

Has the art gone out of Potography?

No.
Art was never "in" photography in the first place.
Photography is a process and Art may or may not be a result of that process.
The poem is in the writer not in his pencil.

[baro-nite]

Photography has never fitted neatly into the fine arts, because of its many non-artistic uses, and because its production doesn't involve the same level of fine motor skill as other arts. But photography as art is quite possibly in something of a renaissance, both directly and indirectly thanks to the rise of digital photographic tools. Directly for the obvious reason, but indirectly because film is now a choice rather than the norm, and it is a choice that leads some even further back to older photographic techniques and media. I could be wrong but I rather doubt there was so much interest in, e.g., wet plate, 10 years ago when digital was just taking off. Of course shooting wet plate doesn't make it art, but it does show a serious commitment to the craft and to the essence of photography.

The age of the snapshot began over a century ago and ever since has the world has been flooded with snapshots. These used to be shared with prints and slideshows, now via Facebook etc. Photography remains one of the few areas where vast numbers of people are active creators of some sort. Actively taking part in an art form gives one a different level of appreciation than being a mere consumer. This is good for the future of photography as art.