I strongly believe that one of the greatest things about the Internet is that there is an enormous long-tail of niche communities to serve every interest you can think of. Running a couple of sites for roller coaster nerds, naturally I have to believe this. One of the things I valued quite a bit around the turn of the century was the many communities devoted to video and photography. I was already out of video by then, but it had made the digital leap in professional circles, if not yet high definition. Photography was just starting to go down that road, and I remember buying a Nikon Coolpix 990 in 2000, Time's "Machine of The Year."
It's probably important to understand that before this time, there were a lot of constraints to capturing images. In video, we had to deal with crappy sensitivity to low light and the fragility of tape (including digital... solid state media would take another five or six years). You learned the craft, to bring lights, and plan ahead. Photography had essentially not changed in decades. While auto-focus systems kept getting better, your biggest constraint was still film. It was not free, and the feedback loop was long because you had to process the film before you could see what you got.
As many people have said, constraints force you to be creative, and when video and photography went digital, the constraints largely went away. This doesn't mean that people entirely stopped being creative, but it did feel like people were less interested in the creativity and more interested in the technology.
What got me to thinking about this was a recent product announcement from Canon. I went looking at some of the old message boards and such that I used to frequent (video and photography... as this particular camera line does video too), and it didn't take me long to remember why I stopped going to those sites. Craft has taken a back seat to pissing matches over megapixels and half-stops of dynamic range. There are people who will run out and buy the latest thing, and they're only hobbyists. Imagine if people devoted that kind of energy to talking about technique!
Again, I'm not anti-technology. I think the hipster-dick directors who insist they have to shoot on film are completely full of shit. But the people who look at cameras and think, if I just had more pixels, or could push the sensitivity one more stop, or go just a little wider... what do they really hope to achieve? Is the expense worth it?
My two camera bodies are 7 and 6-years-old. My video camera is only 3, but I had the previous one for six years. It's one of the gadget areas of my life where I don't spend very often, because it's a series of small incremental changes over time that aren't worth it. That I don't work professionally (well, maybe once or twice a year, at most) isn't the reason, I just don't think I need it.
Video and photography are media used to tell stories. It's too easy to forget that. I mean, Philip Bloom made a short film with a goddamn video Barbie. Here's a guy I greatly respect in terms of his technology knowledge and ability, and he pulled off something clever with the worst tool imaginable. That's why the dude gets work with CNN.
Bloom is actually a great filter for noise in the video world, because while he understands the tech, he lives in the bigger world of finite budgets, real-world ergonomics and "good enough." The tools don't make him, his work does.
So while the bedwetting continues over the latest announcement, and people lust after the newest thing, take comfort in knowing that the money they're spending may not be the wisest thing. Stick to the art, and the creative process. That's what makes you something more than an operator.
No comments yet.