Instagram debasing photography?

[UncleFai]

Debasing or popularizing? I don't use it so I don't know.

Instagram is debasing real photography | Technology | guardian.co.uk

[heshanj]

hmm i use instagram, and i dont really get the point of this article bashing it. i mean, sure.. people take a lot of dumb pictures and add a filter to it and think it looks great. but thats the fault of the people taking the pics. like using any camera, the person themselves can get to be more creative, and use it better. the filters make all pictures look the same? then i guess people using real polaroids/lomo/toy cameras which actually have that effect create pictures that all look the same too

nah, i find it a great app for taking pictures of stuff i see when im not prepared with my camera (unfortunately, i still am not able to carry my cameras around everywhere)..sure, its being abused by some of the young facebook crowd at the moment...but ive seen pics that people take (mostly of themselves) that are as stupid, or stupider :P - just my opinion

[ortega]

it is just a genre of photography that is popular right now, you can tell from the images on instagram that there are some real talent there, most are crap, same with regular photography

[Octarine]

The same old song whenever a piece of new technology hits the market... Some self-proclaimed 'keepers of the original art / craft of [insert name here]' will lament about the appearance of a tool / technology that makes things easier or achieves a comparable result as a long night's work did before. They will still do the same in 10..20 years.
It has been discussed here many times that filters and effects are nothing without a good image to begin with. Instagram pics are no exception to that and that's what differentiates the snaps from the pictures.

[giantcanopy]

Debasing or popularizing? I don't use it so I don't know.

Instagram is debasing real photography | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Then one needs to look into himself or herself to seek definition of what is really "real photography"

ommmmm ..

[kei1309]

Instagram is a tool to do a little editing and to upload to share. You can tell who the good ones and lousy ones are in just one glance

it is just a genre of photography that is popular right now, you can tell from the images on instagram that there are some real talent there, most are crap, same with regular photography

Love the photos in your APAD taken by your phone bro

[Shizuma]

Then one needs to look into himself or herself to seek definition of what is really "real photography"

ommmmm ..

chemical based flash and bulky tripod a la Wong Fei Hong era period movies. those where the good old days

[Prajna]

I tried instagram, good platform for square format. I dont really like the filters, though... And few friends posts photos of foods everyday really sicken me of going to that app

[ortega]

Instagram is a tool to do a little editing and to upload to share. You can tell who the good ones and lousy ones are in just one glance



Love the photos in your APAD taken by your phone bro

thanks

[ortega]

I tried instagram, good platform for square format. I dont really like the filters, though... And few friends posts photos of foods everyday really sicken me of going to that app

food pictures don't really look good with filters, some will look stale or radio active

[Octarine]

food pictures don't really look good with filters, some will look stale or radio active

Discoloured food is never really appealing, maybe it's an evolutionary sense we still have.

[Wizongod]

I quite agree with the author of the article there. What she's saying is that everyone who uses Instagram is using the same filters over and over again, such that it's another spam of photos, almost like a meme. Except that it's more irritating because they think that the filters make their photos look good, when in actual fact, it's not any better, if not worse, than the thousands of other photos by other users all looking the same style.

I don't think she's really referring to good or bad photography as much as people hopping on to the same bandwagon. If everyone adds the "same special effect" to make theirs "stand out", the effect no longer becomes special, and this is basically the "problem" (if I may call it one). So I suppose you could say it's debassing photography.

But, and most importantly, I believe in one important thing that Instagram and all the development in photography through the years has done: It has brought photography into the spotlight, and has made it more and more accessible to anyone over the years. With that, there will be bound to be people who suddenly take a step back and realise "hey, I want to make my pictures better", and a new photographer is born. (I started off that way in 2005 with a PnS.) So, out of all this mess, there will be more gems to be found, and more pictures for all of us to enjoy...

[Prajna]

The effects themselves are more striking than the actual photographs

[giantcanopy]

Just do not sit and judge from a high horse. Come down and feel the ground, the world will be a more pleasant place to take photos.

[kandinsky]

An interesting article discussing nostalgia.

Every era has borrowed and repurposed visuals from previous times, but lately design recycling has reached a new high. The endless archives of the Internet allow us to continually review and mine the past with great ease; as a result, we now often cloak the new in the forms of yesterday, even when these forms no longer serve any purpose except as wistful reminders of a world gone by. Does this create a progressive visual culture, or does it impede real progress? In short: has nostalgia become a toxic force in design?

-Truncated-

Perhaps the problem is that we stopped believing both in a better future and in design’s ability to further it. The thread is broken; terrorists have shoe bombs and bioweapons, and we’ve lost hope in the promises of flying cars and glittering cities hovering in the sky. The world’s climate and environment seem headed on a crash course to ruin. And so we cling to design that relentlessly references days gone by because we know what to expect—the scary challenge of the new has been removed from the equation. We seem to want design to give us the reassurance found in the recognizable. For those wishing to discover something new, however, all this unending nostalgia begins to provoke a feeling very close to nausea.

Read more: Has Nostalgia Become a Toxic Force in Design?
Has Nostalgia Become a Toxic Force in Design?

Whether it makes you nauseous or not, there'll always be new tools that disrupt the status quo. At the end of the day, I believe nothing can really ever truly substitute craft & good storytelling.
An exception to this may be photos/videos of cats.

[AnsQ]

My first reaction when i read the article was, "why so serious?"

If people are happy using instagram to photograph themselves and are happy with it, isn't it "photography" to the masses? Isn't photography supposed to be that way? To capture people's memories the way they like it?

Why judge people just because they are using a tool that can recreate effects just by a click of a button?

Maybe there is nothing much to differentiate the author's shots and the majority of the Instagram shots that he saw, hence the grousing. /shrug

[UncleFai]

Well, at least it is useless on Mars...

[edutilos-]

Is this supposed to be a gallery of good examples or bad? It's linked from the article.

Flickr: Kate Bevan's Photostream

[edutilos-]

Actually, who the hell cares - if people are happy with their photography and their friends or random strangers on the Internet think so, how does it affect your life?

Just do your own thing and derive your own happiness out of it , if one is so affected by others' practice of a hobby or practice, then it will never end.

Btw, Flickr Explore and 500 px Popular page also have their fair share of crap photos.