Several years ago, I visited a nice, quaint, little photography shop in Cape May, New Jersey where I enjoyed looking through the photos and appreciating the skill that was obviously needed to shoot some of the stunning images on display.
While speaking with the shop owner, the conversation somehow took a turn that I was not expecting as she began to talk about how just about everyone thinks they are a photographer today. She lamented the rise of relatively inexpensive portable digital cameras and modern smart phones and their adverse (in her opinion) impact on what she considered something of a sacred art form. A number of people, according to the shop owner, even had the audacity to try to show her some of their images on Instagram.
As I stood there with my Canon DSLR and assorted lenses in a bag hung over my shoulder, I really didn’t know how to respond. While I agree that a great deal of what goes into capturing a stunning image is often planning (time of day, season, animal migration, weather conditions, etc.), having an “artistic” eye (what angle works the best? would moving three feet to your left better isolate or frame your subject? perhaps raising or lowering the camera might make a more pleasing image?), and technical knowledge (what shutter speed, aperture, and focal length would work best for the story the photographer is attempting to tell?), I believe that just because an image was taken with a smartphone doesn’t automatically mean that it is unworthy of consideration.
Given the right subject matter, available light, and the eye of the photographer, the fact that these devices are almost always with us even when we don’t have our professional gear makes them, in many ways, an even more perfect camera - as long as we consider their limitations. Would I want to use them for bird photography? Absolutely not. However, a quick landscape shot or a fun snap of friends - why not?. The Christmas tree shot shown above was taken with my iPhone 11 Pro Max as a way for me to quickly capture the mood and sense of what I was experiencing on a magical night out with family celebrating the start of a new year. Maybe I could have captured a more technically perfect image by setting up the DSLR on a tripod, but I have no regrets for using the tools I had on hand.
Regarding the shop owner, I could have pointed out that many “real” photographers also post their images on social media and not just on their personal websites or in fancy art galleries. I could have pointed out that many people will only ever share their images by email or on various social media sites - or at most print them out as 4x5, 5x7, or 8x10, which the images from most modern phones will look almost indistinguishable from those from a more professional camera. I could have pulled out my phone and showed her my own Instagram page. Instead, I thanked her for her time as we had discussed many other things than just her views on the coming photography apocalypse and exited the store and continued my day. After all, in today’s world I’ve learned not to discuss politics, religion, or what constitutes art - to do so could be considered rude in today’s polite society.
