The More People Turn to Exclusively Using Their Phone for Cameras…

…the less people there are who look like real photographers out in the field.

Hence, the more the real photographers stand out. (Yes, I am calling phone photographers not real photographers–to me they’re not.)

Not to take anything away from phone photographers–they’re documenting their world for a moment’s look. They’re notetaking their life. That’s not bad or wrong, it’s just not photography.

Beginning in 1839 there were photographers. They had big cameras on big tripods, they understood the chemistry and knew how to use the tools of their profession.

Then there were Kodak Brownie box cameras starting in 1900 that made ‘everyone a photographer’, only not really. In the 1910s and 1920s, there were discussions among pros and even in the Kodak literature sent to photo studios about how the Brownie crowd was no competition for the real photographers.

The Brownie shooters weren’t ‘real’ photographers. (Yes, I am calling Brownie photographers not real photographers–to me they’re not.)

“You push the button and Kodak does the rest.”

We’ve gone back to that same situation. Most people aren’t carrying cameras. They have their phones and that’s all. They’re snapshooters with their pocket Brownie phone cameras.

“You push the button and Apple does the rest.”

A photographer uses the tools of photography, even if it requires carrying heavy metal.

Those who are left carrying cameras and lenses and gear bags, they are becoming an exclusive group, they’re now the only ones left seen as photographers and that’s a good thing. They can use that exclusivity, use the camera as a tool to approach anyone, chat with folks, request to make a photograph.

They are the photographers and they’re becoming rare, similar to a writer at a coffee shop with a typewriter–they’re different than what is mostly seen.

The more ubiquitous the phone camera becomes, the more the perception of the real photographer grows. As more people resolve that the phone is good enough for them, they can’t be bothered with cameras and lenses, it’s like a sea of people adopting the Kodak Brownie of today–sure it takes a ‘good enough’ photo, but nothing that real photographers take seriously.

Photographers seek excellence, not ‘good enough’.

PHOTOGRAPHERS MAKE PHOTOGRAPHS.

Wow, that’s a lot of numbers!

The ‘phone’ photographers have phone texts and social media as the domain where their photography lives, as short-lived as that may be, but that is their venue. They create images for a glance and a swipe, to get a heart or thumbs up, the dopamine kicks in and they’re happy and done. Never need to see those snapshots again.

The ‘camera’ photographers have prints, gallery shows–actual work that is displayed and collected, that is their domain. They move in the circle of photography, visiting camera stores, meeting other photographers, attending photography events.

There may be a desire for the camera photographers to join the phone shooters in the online world, but that’s not where their work lives. Theirs is a camera as tool/photograph as craft/print as expression medium.

It’s not about the quick but the lasting. Photographers use the tools of photography to create bodies of work. They create thematic photo projects. They work toward making published books.

They gather with other photographers. They attend gallery shows for all kinds of art, not only photography, for they too are artists.

They’re photographers making their life’s work, a body of pictures created to last. To tell their story and it’s not a short story. It’s not just glance-worthy, it’s their worldview, their artist’s vision. One that they cannot not tell.

They’re easy to find.

They’re the ones with the real cameras.