Introduction
Photography was invented over 150 years; it was a high-end art activity. Camera and film was not only luxury equipment, but also needed a great scientific technique to finish the process. People were not easy to be photographed, or even photographing something. Somehow, before 1900, it was an activity for nobles only. Nowadays, thanks to the digital technology, almost everybody has a digital camera, whatever it is a compact camera, a big Single Lens Reflex camera (SLR), or even a camera cell-phone.
Blowing up
There are billions of pictures taken everyday, more than 50% of them are shared online. Most of them are self-portraiture, group photo and life picture. No matter in any location at any moment, people are capturing. Let say you have dinner in restaurant with friends tonight, when dishes are delivered, the first thing you do is not eating, normally, somebody/ies will take out a camera and take a picture of it. during the meal, friends continue taking pictures, and ask the waiter/waitress to help taking group photos with many different postures. After all, you and friends will post those pictures just token via facebook/online sharing. There is no doubt to argue that photography has become a part of our life and popular activity, which is convenient for shearing and socializing.
On the other hand, for those who are interested in photography, they will join a photo club or group together via social networking. They usually hire a young pretty model for model photo shooting or go somewhere far away to capture a beautiful moment of a landscape. They all look like professionals, sometime their equipments even better than the professional. The line between them and professional is getting blurrier; the only difference to identify both is that professions show their works other than online sharing.
Camera is a supporter of growing photo-culture, the beginner of photography normally spends near $10,000 for a set of photo equipment. However, they don’t know all the functions of the camera at all, or even don’t have the basic knowledge about photography. So it brings out a question, why do people buy an expensive camera for normal shooting? The answer is simple “using a DSLR is an icon of popular culture”.
The camera manufacturers see the point of camera becomes a popular good. So they develop many functions that is never considered for a professional camera. Like, Face Detection, Auto scene detection, Style mode, and so. All these are basic functions for beginner and middle level cameras. Some manufacturers would make it a as a kind of fashion in order to target the market trend, camera with different colors other than black, fashionable and light design instead of bulky tank-build camera. So the new photo-culture has change the atmosphere a lots.
Is it too much?
As a photographer, I am happy to see more and more people photographing, it helps people have more understanding about art and society through the creative process. Also the important point is that the trend of photography makes the public has more concern and support about it. As we all know the government will spend more resources on art and culture development. I do believe that photography will become a main aspect of local creation in the near future.
But on the other side of fact, people are getting more and more sensitive towards camera-lenses because it is everywhere nowadays. People feel unsafe when someone takes out a camera, and try to hide or stop the photographer. A serious situation happened during the opening period of my exhibition about Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate. Thousands of people came everyday and picked up cameras shoot everywhere, residences’ life were affected and felt angry about many visitors because they treated them like animals without respect. Finally, the Housing Authority banned all non-residence enter the buildings. This phenomenon shows that most of them do not really do what expect in the exhibition, they didn’t try to get into the community, but just pressed the shutter without any understanding and respect. I did discuss this issue with some photographers and cultural workers, we all felt depress about it, because they went there just following the trend. Hope such phenomenon will be improved later.
References
1. Multimedia networking : from theory to practice / Jenq-Neng Hwang. Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009.
2. An introduction to digital multimedia / T.M. Savage, K.E. Vogel. Sudbury, Mass. : Jones and Bartlett Publishers, c2009.
Related materials
Exhibition website: http://www.hkhulu.com.hk/NTKopenRice/
News: http://hk.news.yahoo.com/article/090408/4/blac.html
Web blog: http://newhongkonger.blogspot.com/2009/04/blog-post.html
Questions
1. How frequent/many you and your friend buy a new photo-equipment a year? Do you think photography becomes a trend/popular culture?
2. Many people post their pictures on Flickr or other online album, do you think that is a good way to show their works as photographers? What is the pros and cons of it?
**the essay was written in a point of view from local culture, that may not be relevant to other place out of Hong Kong.
Siu Wai Hang 50920630
