Video Interview with Anton Kawasaki about Instagram and the Future of Mobile Photography

These are great images. I don’t care what kind of camera someone uses, I care about seeing their project, developed over weeks, months, years. Instagram stokes the fire of our collective interest in photography but fails to deliver on the long term project side–inevitably however some Instragramers will graduate to creating meaningful collections or essays, so it’s all good by me.

To start off, I would say that any kind of apps you use doing photography, be it using a digital product + software or a digital camera + editing software, doesn’t hurt photography at all. It’s kind of a silly question and concern here. I could use the quote of Bill Brandt, British photographer, saying that what’s more important is the result. Mobile phones are just another kind of gears we are now attracted to because it is available and a device that, commercially speaking, is able to rank among devices to take photographs. So talking about whether it is ethical photographically speaking is to talk about gears and not photography at all, be it street or else. Where boundaries can be drawn is whether markets, excluding internet windows which accept any kind of devices, will accept mobile phone photography to be displayed in a gallery or published in magazines and accepted as photography.
In the hard news world we had non photographers recording relevant political unrest and civil wars events shown on Youtube, then shown on TV sets on a worldwide scale, and if not with a worldwide audience responding to it, So in my sense shared I would assume and not for legitimity by many others, mobile photopgraphy can’t be hurting photography, and least is to say street photography for which it has been designed.
In the end we can only ask the users why they use it when cameras are available. What would you say to a mobile phone user if he replies saying that because i don’t have to buy a camear and carry it on top of my phone.
I am not the one who would use such a device because the feel is definitely not the same.Control knobs and ergonomy are not the ones I feel confortable with, the quality of the file is not on par with digital nor film cameras, whichever post-treatment you have to go through.
The final result is what matters most and beyond that is the outcome, the futrue you want to give to your photographs.
And pertaining to that, it will all depend on who will accept to publish your work, if that is your objective, noting that with all the online publishers, if you are willing to use and pay some publishing services they will print your work no matter what devices you used.
So the acceptance of mobile photography is not something that we, as photographers, purists or not, should debate on. It is far more important to assess whether the means we chose and the photography we make will find a way of being seen in the conservative ways and if not what are the means to achieve that to promote, not so much the device, but the things we have to say. The markets are already to crowded and dictated for us to wage war on which devices used are more eligible to have a voice in the world of photography. So focusing on the intent is more important than focusing on the recording device. It should speak to many to acknowledge the fact that since digital technology has been out there we never saw such a quick turnaround and development and thus a rate of obsolescence of the photographic equipment. And leica gears are not behind in doing that. It’s a market wars in the end and photography and its future somehow is at stake.

Cheers.
Stephan

Eric, I love the ideo of the interview but the sound is awefull. I beleive the audio is more important that the video quality in these cases and you could really bump up your production with a better mic. Checkeout this video for mic solutions:

https://vimeo.com/13715848
Ideally you would have a H4N with 2 lav wireless mics. For cheaper check out this little (but high quality) shotgun Mic: http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-MKE-400-Shotgun-Microphone/dp/B0014YVAJG

The advantage is it isolates the audio to what you are directing it at, and can be fitted into the hot shoe of the cam – eliminating all the ambient noise.

just a friendly suggestion…