The Image Factory by The Narratographer

The Image Factory by The Narratographer

It’s no longer about photography, it’s about pictures. A picture is something you take on an iPhone. That is not to say that you cannot make something wonderful on a cheap camera, or camera phone; that is not my point. My point is the level of involvement that is encouraged. They do not want passion, they do not want art. They want something digestible, something that can easily be swallowed, without making them think too much. They want something that can hold their attention just long enough to click a little heart shaped icon, whilst they are waiting for the funny cat video to load. They want Instagram. Whereas photography used to be an art form of sorts, it has now become something incredibly transient. Nothing stands out as being truly amazing, everything blends into that which is around it. And let us not kid ourselves, it isn’t about quality and it never will be. It is all about popularity. Either by buying followers or by advertising yourself relentlessly, you build up a following not because of your creative eye, but because of your persistence. Persistence has its place, but should it ever dip its toes into the world of art? Now my work is fairly popular on here and I usually upload once per day. But I do not kid myself to think that my images are any better than anyone else’s. I have been here a few years, I have upload regularly. There are some people who leave this site because they cannot compete with those selling their editing abilities, or uploading every few hours with another image cloned from their last one. There are so many great photographers on here who get little or no attention, whilst some questionable ones dominate the front page. Success in photography is about frequency, not quality. And as I said earlier, this is not me suggesting that certain plaudits are not deserved. Of course they are. But it is just something that I have noticed over the years I have been a photographer, having watched people spend far more time on advertising their apparent skills than they ever do nurturing or improving them. Personally, I blame places like Instagram. We are encouraged to shoot, save and share, all without thinking about how we want people to see what we have photographed. It is all about getting it out there quickly, immediately. Photography is no longer a studio, it is a factory.

The Narratographer: Photos