I’ve been preparing a video-rant on “Photography” for a while, but, because of the rise of video-scrapers for generative statistical engines, the script got put in the ‘TBD’ folder where things get devoured by time.

Maybe the time has come, once again, for forums to shine.

So, ‘Phone Photography’. The cursed tandem of words that make my blood boil. You’d think it’s because I’m making a ‘phone app’, which has a strong relation with ‘phone photography’. Trust me or not, it’s not the case. However, it’s all connected, and I’ll connect it all in just a second. Keep in mind that these thoughts are in relation to photography as a hobby, or a form of self-expression. ‘Professional photography’ is a whole different beast, which has increasingly less to do with ‘art’ and more to do with ‘commerce’.

Gatekeeping

“Photography is an expensive hobby” is often a sentiment echoed on the internet. You need f0.x lenses, full-frame medium-format digital camera bodies, tripods, straps, monitors, software… Right? How good of a photographer can you be if you don’t even own a Leica M11 Monochrom?

Don’t get me wrong. It’s OK to own gear and use it. It’s fun, it gives results that are different than the ones you had before. But make no mistake, owning a full carbon-fibre tripod will not make you a better photographer, nor it will make your photos look better. Gear is a ‘local’ improvement that can make your photography look better to you. However, once the novelty of ‘sharpness’ or ‘IQ’ or whatever other pseudo-quantitative bullshit wears off, a sudden realisation that the quality of your work depends not on the quill you use to write your poem, but on the poem itself.

That being said, if you use a broken quill, people are going to struggle to read your poem, and it might not be an experience as pleasant as you might have intended. I suppose you understand that the ‘quill’ is the software/process, in this crappy metaphor of mine. Let me come back to this.

Saying that ‘photography is an expensive hobby’ is simply gatekeeping; it’s actively discouraging people from taking the first step, from experimenting with what they have, from sharing their experiments with others, from enjoying ‘photography’.

Nowadays it’s difficult to find a home that does not have at least one sensor in the household. Let me tell you a secret - you can use that sensor to do photography. One of my favourite examples:

• Gameboy? Keith Devereux: "I think this is the best Gameboy trichrome I have…" - Mastodon.ART
• Don’t like charging things? How about a can? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mfpvwbc2F4
• Surely a webcam? GitHub - MrLixm/AgXc: Fork of Troy.S AgX, a display rendering transform available via OCIO and more

These are edge-cases, sure (even though, as time passes, the edgier the case, the more feelings it invokes, personally). But I think it’s safe to say that most of us have a phone with a camera? Plug Saulala here, don't forget to delete this!

Phone Photography

So, ‘phone photography’… As it’s clear, I’m working on an app which was mainly meant for smartphones, but evolved into supporting a wider variety of devices. I’m a curious human, so from time to time I do a websearch to see who might’ve tried the app, and what people think about it. Often enough, I come across the dreaded tandem. ‘Nice for people who are into phone photography’.

In all fairness, photos made with smartphones, too often, do suffer from an absolutely horrid, grotesque processing (and even lens arrangement, like three lenses: Ultra-wide Angle, Super-Wide Angle and Wide Angle). So much so that ‘photography-people’ recoil at a mere thought that you made that with your phone. Most of them can’t explain why, but, generally, their gut feeling is correct.

丁𝒽ⓔ 𝗽၀ѐṁ, е𝜈ѐ𝓷 ナ𝐡ȫυ𝚐ɧ ᾠë𝝞ļ-ᾦ𝑟ïʈʇ𝖾ᥒ, 𝗶š đìꊰ𝐟ⅰ𝒄ữ𝞲ẗ 𝔱ᴑ ŗḛ𝓪₫…

…because of the borken quill.

HDR+ Pro Max, Ultra-wide angle, Subject-sharpening, Background Blur, Highlight Recovery, Shadow Recovery, Local Contrast, Gamut Mapping…

All brilliant of ‘taking inventory of things in front of the camera’ or ‘scanning’, as I call it. Terrible if all you want is a pleasing picture of someone or something that made you feel things.

And this is where the ‘phone photography’ stigma comes from. All those layers of ‘enhancement’ become layers of ‘obstruction’ between the author and their photograph.

Luckily! Luckily nowadays we are able to “strip” (read: not include) all that away and just get the ‘raw’ (camera-native) format, then do the picture forming ourselves. Plug Saulala here as well

This leaves us with an interesting question. How does one sensor capturing and storing a camera-native file that needs to be ‘developed’ into a photo, differs from a different sensor capturing and storing a camera-native file? The sensors in modern smartphones are nothing short of mind-blowing. With a decent development process, one absolutely could not distinguish a photo that was taken with a ‘big camera’ from a photo made with a smartphone.

The only couple of benefits large sensors have (very situational):

• Shallow depth of field with large apertures
• Lower ‘Noise’ (whatever ‘noise’ is)
• Larger image size (for zooming? I guess. But mainly for printing)

Not that anyone, who is looking at a beautiful photo, thinks “I wonder how big the sensor that captured the pre-formed data was”.

Creative Intent

There’s no such thing as ‘faithful representation’. Period. A photo is a tiny 2D plane. It will never ‘match reality’ or ‘match what I saw’, not until you can stimulate the brain directly, bypassing the eyes. Your eyes are a terrible, terrible measurement devices. Your brain does all sorts of gain-regulation, inferring, approximation, and ‘filling in the gaps’. Seeing is a sense, just like touch, just like taste, just like smell, just like hearing.

An apple might taste like an apple, but does apple taste like an apple after brushing your teeth?

Imagine holding a ‘gray card’ in a room that’s solely illuminated by pure blue light. Take a picture of it. What happens? You set the ‘White Balance’ to the gray card, the light of the blue room becomes white[1]. You set the ‘White Balance’ to show how blue the lights were in the room, your ‘Gray card’ becomes blue[2].

So what was your intention, when taking the picture? To depict the grayness of the gray card, or the blueness of the lighting of the room? It can be either, and it’s completely arbitrary!

This applies to every photo you take. Who cares about what is in the ‘shadows’ if you’re taking a beautiful picture of a sunset? Who cares if everything is ‘overexposed’ if you’re depicting a hot summer’s day?

There is no ‘right’, ‘correct’, ‘faithful’ way of developing a photo. No mater what the software tells (or its makers) tell you. hotgluebanjo: ""Skin Tone Indicator."" - Mastodon

Concluding the barely coherent rant

Few things to keep in mind for people who are hesitant to do or try photography:

If the quality of a photo depended on gear (resolution, lens, etm. ), there would objectively be a ‘best photo’ and it would be tied to the sensor size, lens diameter, or ‘IQ’ numbers and it would be easy to measure. “The best photo of all times” is subjective, and has absolutely no relation to any numbers. 1.

Software, nowadays, plays a much bigger part in the ““quality”” of your images than hardware (speaking strictly about them being pleasing or ‘easy to read’) well well well, isn't that convenient 1.

“Scene” is a myth. Concentrate on the picture, and the act of ‘capturing a photo’. Focus on recreating the feeling you felt when you decided to take that photo. 1.

There is no minimum requirement to enjoy photography as a hobby. You don’t need an expensive, dedicated camera, you don’t need gear. You don’t even need an account on a photography form. If you are shy about sharing your photos, start with taking pictures for yourself and concentrate on the process of it. Noticing, framing, capturing, developing, saving, archiving.

Taking pictures is a cheap, non time-intensive task. It can create or enhance enjoyment of the present (or past) moments. Take a picture. You can always delete it later.

---

The stimulus, not the colour of it, if inspected by a picker ↩︎ 1.

The stimulus, not the colour of it, if inspected by a picker ↩︎