1239
business is business (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
266 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

... Walker Evans famously shot with a Zeiss Contax (among many other cameras) - which retailed for an inflation-adjusted ~$2,700.

I'm gonna stick with "art is expensive". Yes, good equipment isn't required to make art (a claim I didn't make) - but the reason to have good equipment is because you don't have to fight your tools to get the results you want. Sure, I could fuck around with gels and can lights to get the cool effects I want - but unless I have a stack of ~2.2 million gels, a Westcott RGB point-light is going to be both more capable and critically less time consuming so more of my time is spent doing art than it is futzing around while my model (usually myself) slowly wilts. Similarly, you can produce incredible paintings with a stick and chewed berries - but the time spent going out to pick a bushel of pokeweed, then process that into a usable format, then wait for each stroke to dry, can't be excluded just because it's a more authentic process.

(And don't be an elitist about what constitutes art, either - stock photography is absolutely an art form even if you sneer at it.)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

    I think eventually, you're saying the same thing. If you want to shoot professionally, it makes sense to get equipment to save time and have a manner of control over reproducibility. That's also why the local metal shop gets the $200 carbide endmills vs. grinding HSS blanks by hand. I did state that already.

    I'll still disagree with two things. You absolutely did say "art is expensive", and stock photography will not produce a lot of art. It can be shot artfully, sure, but that's more of a word choice and eventually rather equates to craftsmanship. I'm sure there is at least one stock photographer out there, producing art all the time. Same with any amazing shot that happens to get uploaded to a stock library not becoming any less meaningful. But that's not common and simply not how the process works, claiming anything else would be disingenuous. I'm not out to disparage the craft or the skill of anyone involved, that's a completely different topic.

    Finally, I was actually absolutely thinking of the Contax 1. Now, don't adjust for inflation. Why would you do that? This camera auctions for around $200, $250 today. Did something happen in the past 86 years that now makes it impossible to shoot the same, great pictures with that camera? I don't think so. Yes, shooting has become a lot more convenient, a lot more consistent (some people would argue that's a bad thing), but surely it's not the tool then that enabled these photographs. That was my angle.

    (Please let's not get hung up on the particular camera model, availability of film etc., it's an example to make a point)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    Did something happen in the past 86 years that now makes it impossible to shoot the same, great pictures with that camera?

    Well, yes? The massive infrastructure built to support film photography disappeared. It's an incredibly expensive and fairly niche medium now, and one that does not have anything like a robust market to support a professional on. It's little more than a gimmick at this point - one that could produce great art absolutely, but one with a microscopically niche appeal and that would see you starved on the street if you tried to support yourself with it.

    Anyways, yes I said art is expensive - twice, in fact - what I never said is that art requires expensive tools (which it doesn't). At the bare minimum art requires a vast investiture of that most precious resource, time, even if we're to set aside all the concerns with other expenses. Doing art professionally though, that needs the high quality tools to deliver the consistent and rapid results.

    Being totally honest here though, I am incredibly skeptical of anyone who acts like they can decide what is and is not art. It's difficult to take their philosophical outlook seriously when they're comfortable passing judgment on that.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent