Photography's days are numbered

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Look around you, it's going to happen.

From petroglyphs and polychrome cave paintings, to the smartphone 40,000 years later, humans have always used whatever medium they had available to capture a moment, a loved one, a thought, a story, so they didn't forget.

The more advanced the tool, the better humans could remember.

Photography is the best technique we have today, and smartphones are the culmination of almost 200 years of advances in photography.

Smartphones will also be the ones that will kill photography.

Technology is about to create a whole new world of tools to capture our lives. I'm no Nostradamus, I don't know if it will be augmented or virtual reality or holograms or something else, and I have no idea what those devices will look like.

I do know this: photography will die within the next 10 years.

The day that technology is able to capture that moment, that thought, that loved one, that story, in a way that we can relive it like we were there... in an affordable way for most of the people... that day, photography will die.

Artists have embraced all the mediums to express themselves for thousands of years, and photography will remain as an art. Like painting, sculpture or the printed word.

Moms won't be taking any more photos, though.

Look around you. It is going to happen.

April, 2000 -

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My mom is a collector of memories.

For years, she spent a lot of money and time putting together photo albums with side notes: where we went, what we ate, how we felt.

"1985-90", "90-93"

They are images of the highlights of our lives: that wedding, that party, that birthday, that day at the beach.

"April, 2000 - ", says the label of the very last photo album.

As you turn pages on that album, you start noticing that whereas one from the 90s would have 3-4 photos per event, this one had 10-20, getting worse and worse towards the end.

No more side notes, no more anecdotes.

And one day, suddenly, no more photos.

There wasn't room for all of them.

Digital happened.

A UV filter and a can of tuna

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I miss my Holga. A lot.

Today, I was out of town and had a few hours to kill. I happened to have a can of tuna in the car (don't ask) and I had an idea. A bad one.

I drove to a camera store and bought a UV filter (first time in my life, by the way).

I opened the can, and started to get some of the oil with my finger. I spread it all over the filter, and then I screwed it on the lens of my Sony a6500.

The results are promising. Not exactly a Holga look but very dreamy and surreal.

I still need to play with this a bit more, using vaseline instead of oil next time.

I'll keep you updated.

Editing

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When Amstrad launched its word processor 30 years ago, writers were initially resistant – processing was for peas, not words. But many soon saw the benefits of life without Tipp-Ex.

How writers learned to love the computer

I'd bet that there are very few writers today neglecting the advantages of the backspace key.

Almost two hundreds years have passed since photography was born, and yet many still see editing as something evil.

The book is the destination. The image is the goal. The tools you use to make your art don't matter.

Listening to destructive criticism

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I've grown used to destructive criticism. I've got a lot of it since I quit my job 10 months ago to pursue a career as a professional artist.

I usually dismiss it and carry on.

One day, Person A -let's call them that way- was trying to discourage me and asked a question:

"You say photography is your job... Do you work 8 hours a day then?".

They weren't looking for an answer, but to diminish what I was doing. Those are the ways of destructive criticism.

I couldn't dismiss it this time, though.

It was true: I wasn't putting the hours. I was definitely getting out and making images, but starting a photography business requires so much more than that.

From that day on, I've been working 12+ hours a day on my photography, 7 days a week.

Even though some people will try to ridicule what you do, the way you take their words is up to you. Use them to your advantage if you can; discard and forget them if you cannot.

The key to making great art

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Photography requires -almost- no technical skills anymore. Modern cameras are able to perfectly expose a scene most of the time.

That alone doesn't make good images, though.

What is it, then? What's the difference between greatness and mediocrity in photography?

Talent -as in a naturally given ability to appreciate beauty- plays a role in this.

A lack of talent can be overcome, though, by anyone who possesses what I believe is the key to great art: passion.

While technical skills and talent can give a photographer a head start, only passion will bring them beyond the point where photographers without it can't go.