Easier, not better.

“A very instagramable image”

I read on ‘the gram’ last week a very fine segment from a photographer friend of mine;

“Since the age of invention, technology has made photography easier, not better. “

The backlash was fantastic in that it upset so many, why, because it's true.

It may have been the same friend who also stated that, ‘everyone calls themselves a photographer these days’, another quote I totally agree with, in fact he may have got it from me. But let’s get one thing straight here, photography, as a job, is not a profession, it is a trade. As a photographer (making money from your craft), you are providing a product and a service. So if you made a deal to get paid to make photographs for a client, you are a professional photographer. If you make images for yourself, be it a project, a gallery, a book cover, or simply for the joy of it, you are a photographer. If you use your phone and take pictures of food or your cat while trying to obtain as many likes as you can on Instagram so you feel special, you are not a photographer just like I am not an interior designer if I rearrange my furniture and put up a new lamp.

The sad part of all of this is that standards as to what is a professional service, and product, have go astray. What people consider acceptable today is a far cry from the days when something needed to be re-shot because it simple wasn’t good enough. The likes of Photoshop, which was intentionally to enhance and refine, is now used to correct and re-create. But this has been going on for sometime and possibly started when someone dropped litter on the studio floor. Rather than pick up the litter, it was removed later in Photoshop.