[niels hansen]

An impotant aspect is: who or what controls the process. If the potographer knows the possibilities and restrictions of the automatic features- all is ok. Ansel Adams preferred full manuel control and carefull preparation, when shooting moving objekts anticipating and finding the desicive moment were important ( Cartier Bresson)

[Wasp]

I would say no. Better technology gives you new opportunities. First a Pentax K-x and then a Samsung opened up new ideas to explore in low light photography for me.

That said, the very best kit does not make you a great photographer. I have seen great pictures taken with meh gear. And very, very bland happy snappies taken with top of the line DSLRs.

Creativity is inside your head, not in the camera you are holding your hands. In my experience, it make a world of difference if you can visualize the result before you press the button. Of course, a little knowledge on dialling in the settings helps as well.

Some of today's tech baffles me a little. Just got to have eye autofocus that will track a moving subject at 10+fps, otherwise the bottom will drop out of the world. Yeah right, and afterwards you will have hundreds of nearly identical images to sift through.

[UncleVanya]

Some of today's tech baffles me a little. Just got to have eye autofocus that will track a moving subject at 10+fps, otherwise the bottom will drop out of the world. Yeah right, and afterwards you will have hundreds of nearly identical images to sift through.

It can be useful to get just the right shot for the difficult subjects. But good technique and patience worked in film and manual focus days for the dedicated. I think features like eye af give wider opportunities - commoditizing what was once rarer. That’s not necessarily good or bad - and like you I don’t want to sift through loads of images most of the time. I prefer to take the images more mindfully.

[niels hansen]

In general, technology has not improved creativity. There has never been produced so many technically perfect , boring photos ( inclusive mine)
Loking back at 65 years in photography there is no connection between my pictures qualiy and the amount of technology available. I think that the reason is that today it costs nothing to make a mistake , we just press and press the trigger. Reflection has partly dissapeared
In 1963 I spent half a year low budget hitchiking in France and Algeria. I took 36 colordias and 72 tri x negatives, they are among my best pictures.
When I look at my production I guess that 150 has a decent standard.The rest is souvenir photos, nice to have for me and a few others but completely uninteresting in the long run.

[ramseybuckeye]

This is a question I have been pondering on for quite a while. My answer is yes, IF a photographer doesn’t understand the fundamental principles of photography, or how to adjust their cameras to get the results they are looking for.

My views were formed over the last decade, when I went from being quite comfortable with using my Nikon DSLR camera and understanding how to get pretty good results, to having several strokes and not being able to engage with photography AT all for almost 5 years, to buying and using a medium format film camera with MF lenses to “relearn the fundamentals again” to where I am today, using a Pentax K-50 DSLR with a mix of AF and MF lenses and having fun again.

I have found a level of technology that works for me. It forces me to work on improving my own skills, it gives me more to be proud of when I master something new (or something I used to know, but forgot), and it makes me happy. If I upgrade to a different camera body, it would only be so I could get a full-frame camera, and have my film era MF lenses work as they were designed to.

More advanced cameras and lenses does not automatically make a better photographer. Without a better understanding of photography, the creative process, and how to get the most from our equipment, we can only get so far.

Maybe if one lets technology stifle creativity, but in my own opinion foe myself no. Technology is just another way to get to a point. I'm sure when the first cameras were developed "paint" artists at the time may have thought the same thing, but for someone with a great artistic mind, but a shaky hand it opened up a new world. The DSLR and software do not make the photo any more than the analog camera and film developing did, it's the artist or photographer making the decisions, everything but your mind is just tools. Who cares what tools you use to make the picture, as long as you like it and had fun doing it and it meets your needs.

[house]

I would pay to see an Elena Shumilova exhibition, but probably not one by my local real estate photographer.

Seeing the local real estate photographs in a proper exhibition, carefully curated and displayed would probably be a truly great show. It has the potential of meaning that Shumilovas photos will never have. I would never pay to see her work.

[robgski]

Mike, I think it's as easy as when you finish up getting the shots you need, to spend the last minutes of the session doing something along those artsier lines, something that was not part of the original objective.

I follow a few fashion photographers on Flickr, and I appreciate it when they post a BTS image of the model in an informal and relaxed pose, perhaps smiling or laughing. It serves to portray the model as a relatable person, an individual, not just a humanoid clotheshorse.

[clackers]

Seeing the local real estate photographs in a proper exhibition, carefully curated and displayed would probably be a truly great show. It has the potential of meaning that Shumilovas photos will never have. I would never pay to see her work.

You prefer advertising pictures, House?

You know so many people who do commercial photography like that are frustrated with their lives, right?

And the worst thing about it, is that after a week of taking pictures of garments or living rooms or whatever, they can be drained and not have the motivation to take the photos they really want to do at the weekend.

Wedding photographers too, can end up in a real funk, an existential crisis.

[clackers]

I follow a few fashion photographers on Flickr, and I appreciate it when they post a BTS image of the model in an informal and relaxed pose, perhaps smiling or laughing. It serves to portray the model as a relatable person, an individual, not just a humanoid clotheshorse.

Yes, but those shots - excellent portraits - are unusable for the client, because they distract from the clothing that needs to be promoted. The photo ends up being about her and not the product.

For instance, it is uncommon in fashion photography for the model to be looking at the camera, because that's where our eyes tend to travel to first.

[clackers]

Perhaps..., but you might also say the photographer was lulled into complacency because they were the owner of that bright shiny new object that "does things" other cameras can't... and didn't take the time to figure out how to get the camera to do it.

Again, Kendra, I think you're describing a person, perhaps not very bright, perhaps not very artistic, not the technology itself.

A camera being able to tether output to a 7" monitor to achieve critical focus in the field can't possibly affect an owner who is unaware of that capability. If they were always limited in their ability and ambition, they'll stay limited in their ability and ambition, IMHO, and they'll keep doing what they used to do.

[niels hansen]

I just did a little researh on Shumilova. what I see is absolutely forgettable: sugar sweet and sentimental. Is her exposuremeter broken?

[BigMackCam]

I just did a little researh on Shumilova. what I see is absolutely forgettable: sugar sweet and sentimental. Is her exposuremeter broken?

It just goes to show how very personal and subjective is our appreciation of art. After Ian mentioned her work, I had a quick look at her website. I think she's a very talented photographer, and I don't see any problems with exposure either (I guess her numerous clients feel the same). Hers is not my favourite subject matter, to be sure, but I don't have an issue with a bit of sentimentality - especially if that's one of the artistic goals. I'd happily view her work in exhibition...

Thank goodness we're all different and don't all like - or produce - the same artistic output. How dull that would be

[Lord Lucan]

In general, technology has not improved creativity. There has never been produced so many technically perfect , boring photos ( inclusive mine)Loking back at 65 years in photography there is no connection between my pictures qualiy and the amount of technology available......In 1963 I spent half a year low budget hitchiking in France and Algeria. I took 36 colordias and 72 tri x negatives, they are among my best pictures.

You must have had some good kit in 1963. Most of my older photos, a little later than that, are so technically awful that their artistic merit (or otherwise) does not even come into consideration. Yet I had a camera (a hand-me-down from my father) that was considered better than average when it was new in the 1950s - it had control of focus (unaided), shutter and aperture. I set the exposure by means of this circular slide-rule gadget :-

......... and to make matters worse, someone gave me some unqualified advice always to "over-expose by a stop" which was probably meant for B&W but disasterous for my reversal film shots. I was estimating distance to focus, and when I used flash it was a crummy little straight-ahead thing that gave everyone red-eye and made everywhere look like a crime scene.

The result was that most of my old photos with that old kit were rubbish, including regrettably some important ones that I am recently trying to salvage on the computer. The irony was that my father was a semi-pofessional who took superb pictures but with a Rolleiflex and a Weston exposure meter - such items far beyond my budget then.

I was in my 30s, and kids growing up with no good pictures of them, before I bought a then modern SLR. I should have done it years earlier. Suddenly, thanks to the better technology, my pictures were transformed by the in-camera metering and focussing. I bought a flash unit with significant power and a swivel head, and I discovered the superiority of bounce flash. With the technical side sorted it became worthwhile to think about composition and other artistic aspects; I believe that technology and artistry are independent factors that both need to be good. I still tended to take shots in manuaI mode, but that comes to me without thinking as I am used to it (I have never used a program mode and never will). The results encouraged me, and I studied the books, and have made a hobby of it.

Having said all that, the technology was levelling out with film and is now levelling out with digital. Of course, the marketing people want to set us back to the foot of a further upgrade curve with mirrorless and video capability, but mirrorless is not a significant change and video is an entirely different field. It is hard to see where one would go significantly further with still photography but that won't stop the sales people trying. My guess is mirrorless camera bodies getting very thin (new mounts again! Cheers from the sales people!) like big phones, serving also as phones, TV controllers, and can openers too. But the photos will look the same.

[niels hansen]

It just goes to show how very personal and subjective is our appreciation of art. After Ian mentioned her work, I had a quick look at her website. I think she's a very talented photographer, and I don't see any problems with exposure either (I guess her numerous clients feel the same). Hers is not my favourite subject matter, to be sure, but I don't have an issue with a bit of sentimentality - especially if that's one of the artistic goals. I'd happily view her work in exhibition...

Thank goodness we're all different and don't all like - or produce - the same artistic output. How dull that would be

@bigmac
I have revisited her homepage, maybe my old screen is not reliable, I withdraw the exposure remark. Maybe we talk about different pictures, I was on her homepage>prints<. Where were you? You are right: taste is different

[BigMackCam]

@bigmac
I have revisited her homepage, maybe my old screen is not reliable, I withdraw the exposure remark. Maybe we talk about different pictures, I was on her homepage>prints<. Where were you? You are right: taste is different

I looked at the "Artworks" section of her website. Two of the photos in particular really speak to me... the little girl carried by her (great?) grandfather with tenderness and concern, and the little boy walking with his feline companion They convey real depth of emotion to me, and I think they're quite beautiful...