Delicious LiveJournal Links for 4-14-2010

[andrewducker]

• Bishop of Tenerife blames child abuse on the children
  ‘There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you’
  (tags: abuse rape catholic pedophilia)
• Vatican blames homosexuals and Jews for priests raping children.
  (tags: catholicism Jews homophobia EpicFail)
• How the internet is destroying the career of professional photographer
  Huzzah!
  (tags: photography flickr technology internet publishing news photo)

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Wait.

How did gay Jews become priests in the first place?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

They're Masonic Illuminati working to destroy the Catholic Church from within. Under orders from the Trilateral Commission, no doubt.

[andrewducker]

It's all part of the Zioninst Homosexualist Axis Of Eeeevil!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

The only thing that pisses me off about that is that being neither Jewish nor gay, I can't join.

I want to be part of an Axis of Evil!

I am, however, circumscribed, so maybe I could fake it.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Interesting how the greater availability of good photography is being written up as a bad thing. I really don't have much sympathy with the whining of old pros who refuse to live in the present, in whatever line of work.

[andrewducker]

Circumscribed, Circumsized, or both?

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I should learn not to type when I'm in an Internet cafe and distracted by women in short skirts.

[andrewducker]

From reading your journal, I am unconvinced that there are times when you are not distracted by women in short skirts (unless it's by women _not_ in short skirts).

[andrewducker]

I know. The right of people to make money from a scarcity that no longer exists strikes me as...silly.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

When I'm at home I am, instead, distracted by my cat.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

My cousin's a photographer and he seems to be doing okay. But then he doesn't just take pictures of random shit and try to flog them as stock. He gets hired to take pictures of specific stuff.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Presumably the objection (if they thought it through) would be: (1) it's a shame the skills are lost, even if they are objectively useless much of the time, either since you may lose out in the cases when the greater skill WOULD be useful, or since any loss of skill is a shame (2) it's unfair on people who are obsoleted, and there ought to be more middle ground between being thrown out of work instantly, and of being subsidized into lasting in perpetuity. If C++ is made obsolete by advancing technology, I admit I'd feel much the same way :(

(Of course, the emotional response is probably more like "aaa! Things are changing and I didn't expect it! eek!" but that doesn't mean there aren't SOME sane reasons, even if they don't justify rejecting the advance.)

[andrewducker]

Wedding (and other event) photography is definitely something I'd want to use a specialist for, because you only get one go at it, and it's easy to cock things up. I know a couple of people that have done Weddings, and it's a lot of work.

[andrewducker]

Well, yes. This is why we have jobseekers allowance, and retraining courses paid for by the government - so that if you're made redundant and your skills are now useless you can be helped to find something new to do.

And yes, it's a shame when skills are lost, but that's what hobbies are there for. If people want to spend their weekends building Viking longboats, reenacting civil war battles or taking photographs with film cameras then I applaud them.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Hot.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my comment was probably a bit rushed and ill-thought out. I totally agree with you; I guess what I mean is that though you're right in principle, it will no doubt go on taking people decades to get used to it, and that's probably inevitable.

[broin.livejournal.com]

I agree with a post Dawkins recently made. Finally, finally, the Church is doing exactly what I want it to.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I guess either way I'm distracted by pussy.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Strictly speaking, the Vatican hasn't blamed the Jews; one retired priest did. The Vatican merely pointed out that the fuss about priests raping children is just like what the Nazis did to the Jews.

[broin.livejournal.com]

I hate myself a little more after that.

[broin.livejournal.com]

I'm stealing 'longboats' for the next time I discuss where newspapers are going. :D

[andrewducker]

Or film cameras (see latest post).

You read Steel Beach? The people who live in "Disneys" seem somehow apposite here - keeping old skills and technology alive, but not for any particular purpose, purely for the joy of it.

[broin.livejournal.com]

I haven't read that, but I think I bought it recently.

There's some similar stuff in 'Makers'. All the more poignant because their skills are future skills for you or I.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of things which are very difficult to do - photography of architecture is extremely hard to do well, for example.

But then if you're doing any kind of shoot, you should hire someone you think will perform best under the circumstances, especially if it's the kind of one-off or time-limited thing where you *need* someone who will perform well and not take hundreds of photos to get one decent shot. Photography is easy. Good photography isn't. Anyone can produce a great picture given enough shots, but a good photographer will take a much higher percentage of those. I'm not saying amateurs (in the sense of non-professional) can't be great photographers*, but professionals are more likely to be good photographers than your average person who happens to take photos.

[andrewducker]

It's worth the price of admission just for the opening line :->

But the rest of it is also great - one of my favourite books.

[andrewducker]

Btu the advantage of crowdsourcing this stuff is that there are millions of people out there putting stuff up, and you can thus find good photos very quickly from them.

If I wanted a picture of something that was happening today, I'd absolutely be paying someone to take that picture. If I wanted a good picture of the Eiffel Tower then I'd be off to Flickr.

[simont]

There's a slightly less silly version of the argument, which posits that in the era of the professional, you'd get a photo of quality X and pay somebody £Y for it, whereas now you can find a photo of quality a bit less than X for free; so while photographers are still prepared to take £Y for providing the higher-quality photo, the people wanting the photos are less prepared to pay for it, or perhaps prepared to pay less. Hence, the professional photographer loses out and the typical result ends up being of lower quality.

Of course, if the people complaining about this are mostly professional photographers, one is tempted to guess that it isn't coincidence that their professed concern for the image quality happens to align with their own financial interests. And you can argue the premises back and forth until there's photographic evidence of the cows coming home. But supposing somebody to sincerely believe that version of the argument, it's not as inherently silly to think that it's a shame people's standards are dropping for their sake and yours than to think it's a violation of your rights that your business model is obsolete.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I'm not saying that crowdsourcing photos is bad or wrong (I often want photos of crows flying, for example, and off to flickr I go!). If I wanted, say, a photoshoot of a new building for a magazine I'd hire a professional. And if I wanted all the photos to be in one style I'd rather hire one person than try to find a bunch of photos online that not only looked good but looked good as part of a series. Also, the Eiffel Tower is a very famous building. If I wanted a load of photos of, say, Joseph Thomson's house I'd be hard pushed to find a range large enough to get what I wanted (er, having just looked, I don't think there's more than about one online).

[andrewducker]

This would tend to indicate that what people actually want is a photo of quality Y, but they were only being offered photos of quality X due to the perfectionist nature of photographers. If I don't need high quality photos then why would I pay for them?

But I can understand that if what you really care about is the quality then you'll be incensed by the situation.

[andrewducker]

I think we're solidly in agreement here :->

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I suspected as much ;)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

My colleague John Naughton did a column on this recently. One point was that digital tech levelled up the technical quality of photos: anyone who can press a button can now get good exposure, focus and crispness, but even a collection of Cartier-Bresson's finest shots had over a quarter that wouldn't meet modern standards.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Gah, which was the original link posted. Sorry about that, ignore me, I'll go and sit in the corner.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

How on earth can it be a violation of your rights to have your business model go obsolete? It seems to me to be silly no matter what the justification for the belief is.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I've a friend who's a wedding photographer and she's certainly not being put out of work by amateur photography being at a higher level. I doubt wildlife photographers who spend days camped out to get the National Geographic front page shot are in any danger of losing commissions either.
I also doubt those who have decent ideas for taking a subject and getting a unique shot out of it have anything to fear, so long as their method involves some amount of experience and willingness to do hard work beyond simply pointing and clicking.

In other words, those who are going to lose out probably deserve to anyway. When your only advantage is more expensive gear and the ability to focus well, you've only yourself to blame :)