The article covers a lot of territory but I can say from experience that the limitations to current CGI techniques mean that automation is still a ways away.
I produced all the shots for a global diaper company that is on shelf today. The pack designs were a tough format: images needed to be extremely horizontal on one side, and vertical on the reverse. But you can't just ask the photographer to shoot wide and crop in, because the new HD Flexo printing is way more hi-res. The approach at the time was to take the baby imagery and 'paint in' the extra background in Photoshop, a very time-consuming process that had to be repeated for every single image for every single region, with wildly inconsistent results. We created a replica of the on-set nursery in CGI, all the way down to matching the lighting in the C4D studio.
Yes it made the process way more flexible, yes we could localize everything with a new render, and yes we could add props or change the decor. But every render required a human eye to match the camera angles/scale of the baby shots. The uncanny valley is real, even with all the little tricks you can do to make it seem more photorealistic.
I do like the idea of AI-generated baby faces - the casting process / ethnicity requirements / rights management challenges are real. And maybe it wouldn't be all that bad if everyone knew that the babies weren't human. But the cost to develop and manage that system require real experts, a huge expense for a company that only needs baby shoots every so often. I imagine a version of 'thisbabydoesntexist' and how that would even slot into the content production workflow - it feels impossible. It's much cheaper to outsource this stuff to production companies that are smart about how they capture all the different kinds of content.
There are definitely companies where CGI makes sense to develop in-house. IKEA's approach comes to mind since they have super modular and global approach to furniture. But most companies have such a big product turnover that photography is still cheaper. Don't even get me started on hard-to-render products that require serious expertise to visualize. We tried to develop a CGI diaper but wow it was insanely complex.
I'm optimistic about the future of the space since there is so much design territory to explore in terms of workflow improvements. But I still love something real - my wife is shooting a story for a national magazine today on a local woodworking artist and I know it could never in a million years be automated. The more that computational photography advances, the more important meatspace photography will become.
This seems like a very difficult way to do things unless you really needed to mess with items in the background.
I would think there is still plenty of room to crop a single image down from something like a new Canon 1D. Even just making a composite image if really needed sounds much easier.
This really sounds like a use case for an anamorphic lens. Sure, it's a bit exotic for DSLR photography. But it certainly sounds like you had the budget for it.
1D (XII or XIII) is 20Mpx (at 20fps), curious what resolution you're printing the actual packaging at given this isn't enough.
I've done some packaging production for a micro-business - it would be really interesting to see how it's done at a large company from taking photos through to final product.
The resolution is fine if you're in close like we were. But then you lose out on the room details which were needed the final composition, hence the CGI extension. The resolution is only a problem if you shoot pulled back and then try to crop in later.
It's not about fps, though the shutter was really fast since babies move a lot. That was hard to balance with the lighting because we couldn't fire strobes since it would freak them out.
Basically we were shooting a lot of captures really fast (but not quite burst shots) to get the perfect facial expression. Medium format camera digital back files are so huge that they can't cycle that fast. As it was, the photographer's team had to set up a system that got jpegs and RAWs at the same time: the jpegs were radioed into Capture One for immediate review, while the RAWs went to card and were imported afterwards. It was amazing to watch the team work. We had 30k captures after 5 days of shooting - it was a beast to edit down to 27 final shots.
It sounds like a memory card write speed limitation, is that correct? I've seen medium format cameras advertised with 5fps bursts (not sure on burst length), but if it takes 30 seconds between bursts to write to the memory card, that would drastically slow down the capture rate.
Exactly. The thing is, even shooting tethered with medium format, the pipe just isn't big enough to keep up and the computer and/or capture software gets bogged down, too.
Its an interesting tech study but don't forget the business side. I'm so incredibly old (LOL being sarcastic) that I remember high school yearbooks had school photographers for K-11 however seniors had to submit professional photographer pictures.
You see it had only been made illegal a generation ago to submit a photo with every resume. In theory, photos were submitted to see if the applicant could clean up and dress in a professional stylish manner. It was made illegal in the 60s for very theoretical discrimination reasons. As if during an interview a manager wouldn't notice an applicant was black or a woman, but via the miracle of photography they could notice, LOL.
Anyway culture and especially the ed establishment moves slowly so they were still preparing kids to submit photos with their resumes in the 80s despite it being illegal since the 60s. So seniors had to submit photos.
Anyway the whole point of this anecdote is culture moves slow, and until "recently" if you wanted to graduate HS and get a job you needed a zillion copies of yourself from a professional studio.
Also see Department of the Army standard "DA photo" for promotion packets, and the peculiar government requirements of passport photos. The days of 50% of the male population having served in the military are long gone with the WWII vets, the population as a whole, countrywide, is getting waaaay too poor to internationally travel thus no need for passports, etc.
It's a bit funny how it's illegal to submit CV with a photo( in most countries,at least) yet the second some HR drone opens your CV, they'd go on LinkedIn or other platforms to check what's going on.
Can someone on HN explain why some links to medium try to make me setup an account to read while others go to a clean well designed blog style post, the way they should.
Is this a setting based on popularity of the article? who is posting?
I think it's based on how often you visit Medium. If it's your first time visiting in a ~month, you just see the article. If it's your ~third time, they ask for an account.
Just open the URL in an incognito window when you get that -- it's what I do.
Some medium articles are 'medium exclusive' (I don't remember the exact term). In theory, only people paying for a medium membership can view them, but in return they get a little more juice in medium's internal advertising. Many people inadvertently choose this setting because of some dark patterns around the publishing interface. Everyone gets a couple views of the members-only articles a month free, functionally infinite if you use incognito mode. I think there's also a random pop-up to harass you into using the app/an-account which is orthogonal.
I’ve run a creative studio as well an an independent photography practice for many years and much of what this article says about the future is true. The main driver here is to reduce costs and increase output by removing the human element. It gets closer each and every day.
But at the same time, the high end keeps getting higher and that’s why the photo studio is still going to be around for a long, long time.
'computational photography' is interesting because it requires a different way of thinking about what an image is than what we were used to. As if going through a certain shaped lens is the only way to make "real" photos.
My own thinking on the subject got severely reshaped when I took it upon myself to write some alternative lens models for Chunky[1] (the Minecraft scene path-tracer) and later my own path-tracer[2]. Once I realized that every pixel on the screen could be mapped to any virtual light-sensor position and direction, suddenly projections were arbitrary. I could define a lens that wrapped around the subject, pointing inwards if I wanted, and that was no less 'real' than a pinhole or fisheye lens.
Of course modern phones take things a bit further than just straightforward transformations. Guessing what's between the pixels or selectively blending multiple images together maybe crosses my subjective threshold between what I think of as a 'real image' and a 'made-up' one. Especially as the AI gets smarter. Because I can no longer understand exactly what happened.
I feel as if we will see fewer, but far better, pro photographers.
It will probably be some time before we have AI-assisted composition and lighting, and that's the real secret sauce of high-impact photography.
That kind of thing comes from having an emotional being in charge of the photography device. They "feel" the image, as much as they "see" the image, and know how to capture it in a way that will have others feel the power of the image.
That is what separates the pros from the amateurs.
But those pros now have some truly marvelous tools to help them to capture that emotion.
This is like the growth of CGI. When the tools first appeared, they were high geek-factor monsters that only an engineer could use, so only engineers used them, with predictable results. That resulted in some technically marvelous, but not particularly enjoyable, stuff[0].
Then John Lasseter and Pixar happened. Anyone remember the "Luxo Jr." animation?[1] That was where the world changed.
For the first time, emotion was reflected in CGI. Nowadays, true artists can do amazing things with tools like Blender, Maya and After Effects. There are now feature-length CGI movies that can have 300-lb cage fighters sobbing in their beer.
Until AI can produce emotions (shudder at the thought), there will always be a need for pro emotional craftsmen. The tools and medium may change, but artists have been around since the days of the Maltravieso Gallery.
I met a former professional photographer who had become an economic analyst. He used to do fashion and music shoots for major magazines (Conde Nast etc..). He gave me an interesting insight into why his former business collapsed.
First of all he said that his photography business was predicated on the fact that he held the whip hand with respect to his clients: they needed to be absolutely sure that the person they sent out got the right shots on the day. There wasn't going to be another opportunity to ask Bono or whoever to do them over. So Conde Nast had to be absolutely sure that he would produce the goods. For him to be good enough to be sure of always getting the shots no matter the conditions, weather, light conditions etc...the photographer had to have the requisite experience and the only way traditionally they could get that experience was by using up a lot of film. In his view the cost of the film you would need to go through to have got to his level was approximately £60,000. That was the barrier to entry.
With the barrier to entry and with his strong position with respect to his customers he got two important things: a high level of pay and royalties on renewals for his work. So they not only paid him but he had an ongoing revenue for shots they had paid him to take, if they wanted to reuse them over time.
Once Digital got good enough, the barrier to entry fell and the magazines slowly gained the upper hand, paid less and didn't agree to the same terms.
None of that loss of detail matters much once the image is scaled down to Internet-typical resolutions. Doesn't help that photographers often don't even give you access to the full resolution images, so even if you make use of one, you don't end up with something that is superior to whatever your phone-AI can fake together.
In general it seems utterly bizarre the obsession with the press and users about how hyped the new iPhone camera is every year when all the photos and videos end up on Instagram that compresses everything to a smudge of jpeg/mp4 compression marks anyway.
Surprised we haven't had a social network where the gimmick is just high quality photo and video that actually looks as good once it's uploaded as it did on your monitor.
Go back and look at Instagram or Vine posts from five to seven years ago, and compare them to today. The improvement in image and video quality is dramatic.
We just don’t think the improvement in imaging is a big deal, as year-over-year improvements are minor.
Counterpoint: as your online identity becomes more and more of your brand, the need for a professional, high-quality headshot is more important than ever.
(Less so for full-time engineers, but absolutely for management, sales, consultants, etc.)
Headshot photographers not only provide crucial professional lighting expertly adjusted for the contours of your face, but also have a grab bag of techniques to establish rapport and get an authentic, confident, warm expression out of you that is almost impossible to get otherwise for most people. Not to mention work with you to get the right tone and look -- the background and lighting and expression a quirky food blogger needs will be totally different from a conservative CEO, which again is totally different from Brooklyn fiction author.
And because of people's need to brand themselves online, headshot photographers who 20 years ago had actors as 95% of their business, now have business professionals as a majority of their clients. Business is booming.
The photo studio isn't going anywhere -- it's just changing what and who we need to take photos of.
Counterpoint to your counterpoint: the prevalence of inexpensive off-camera light kits means it's much easier than it used to be to get the kind of lighting you want, where you want it (i.e. somewhere less sterile than a studio). None of the photographers I know have studios, but they all have great strobe kits and are quite skilled at creating the kind of light you're talking about outdoors or in some other interesting location.
Since it has moved online, my younger male friends have spent quite a lot of money on professional photographers(not in studios, but outdoors) to get that perfect candid shot at dusk in their new attire, hoping for an edge in the overcrowded dating market.
Thanks to tinder and Instagram, dating is now a continuous arms race for young males and I assume it comes with it's own set of potential mental illnesses.
The top dating apps are designed such that photos are literally all that matter. What's worse is all of the popular cultural ideas we have about photos are wrong.
Photos don't just show people accurately -- in fact, you need some level of skill just to look as attractive as you do in real life. So no, that unsmiling selfie you took in your basement isn't "just what you look like" or "authentic."
Not to mention, people think and do. Images are still. This creates a situation where humanity can be easily lost. And where the need to brand yourself and put a lot of effort into showing hobbies etc. is paramount.
It's sad to see so many young guys tie their identities to the good or bad performance of their profiles when it's not really them being judged but the pictures they chose.
Proper photography is important, and a sense of personality is needed to start a conversation.
There are differences in the way men and women are expected to behave on Tinder and elsewhere, but a critical step is getting past "your photo is worth a swipe" to having something to say to each other. Many women will delete you if you have nothing better to open with than "hi". You are expected to actually look at the photos (and read the text) so that they feel you are actually interested in them.
They want to know something about you, too. Action shots, backgrounds, even just your smile says a lot. Taking the time and thought to get a good photo will attract more interest than just a random selfie. But it's more than just being the best approximation to ideal maleness. It's a sense that you are a person worth hanging out with.
If you can teach this to men, awesome. I would say that I found some of the portraits on your front page a little stiff. One had a purely black background, and while an attractive photo in itself it was a blank about personality.
Thanks for sharing. This looks interesting, and I might end up using it in the future. (Right now I'm holing up due to the pandemic, and not venturing out; later, I plan to get on the various online dating apps that are out there.)
Some feedback:
1. When I click "Get Started", I'm presented with bright blue "Sign up with Facebook" and "Sign up with LinkedIn" buttons, and a small faint "Sign up with email" which I can barely read. Why is this?
I feel like Facebook is selling everything I do to the Russians. Or... something. :) In any case I don't trust social login, and by extension I tend not to trust websites which push me to social login.
2. Out of curiosity I created an account, didn't upload any photos, but started rating other people. Immediately afterwards, I'd love to see how others rated the same photos. I'd learn something interesting about how people present themselves.
3. After rating 20 or so photos I got accused of "poor vote quality", with "Our AI has detected randomness or patterns in your votes." Ummm... huh? By definition, any data will always either be random or have patterns. Anyway, I got chided for doing something-or-other wrong, with a request to vote better (how?).
I recognize there's a problem here -- you don't want people to just give everyone top ratings on everything, because they just want to increase their own credits. Nevertheless, at this point I got discouraged and stopped.
Not all poor quality voting is conscious/malicious. An individual with alexithymia, for example, might give unuseful feedback despite their best effort.
I really love the idea of photofeeler, and I want it to work.
Just to share my 2c: I can't get over how strange the pricing structure for photofeeler is. I've come to the site a few times with my credit card ready, willing to drop a few dollars to get results.... but the abstraction of your pricing model is just confusing enough that I've dropped off the funnel each time.
Ok, so I need credits or karma to run a test. So I answer a few photos, get my karma to medium, and leave the test over night. The results are often inconclusive - my photos are consistently rating as "meh->ok" across the board. Ok, that's fine, I'll try another. Upload another, get more karma, leave that over night. Ok, this photo has +.8 attractiveness, but -.6 smart. Ok, not sure what to do with that information, but it's intriguing. The results are close enough, that I'm curious what the margin of error is if each is getting ~10 votes.
Ok, well maybe this is just the downside of the freemium model. Let's take a look and see what I can buy. 40 credits for $10. Ok, so 1 credit is .25c. Cool. What's a credit get me. A CREDIT GETS ME ONE VOTE! Ok, hold on, that can't be right.
Let's think about this backwards. How many credits do I need? So I probly want 15-20 votes on any one photo to get enough data to be conclusive about the results. Sure. And I'll want to run at least 3 photos. So, I'm looking at $15 per test to know which of 3 photos is preferred.... but realistically if I want to get rid of my own biases, I'd be testing 5-10 photos... Hmmmmm.
At this point I do some work to get some free karma (note: if there were hotkeys for voting it would make a WORLD of difference).... leave the test over night. Look at it the next day, say "meh, results are inconclusive based on sample size" and forget about the site for 8 months.
You probably have already thought about this—and it is a bit of a derail—but it seems to me that a "veriface" service that provides attestations, or some combination of verifications, as to the accuracy with which a photo represents someone could be useful.
In practice, I think what matters a lot though especially for guys is ones ethnicity, especially for Asian men. I think that rarely gets mentioned in these discussions.
This Asian male model's story of online dating is pretty much my experience as well as the experience of my other Asian male friends, except while he's obviously very physically attractive, I'm not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAo_mZMIUgg
Having a nicer headshot didn't change any of that, including for some of my male Asian friends who are also models and thus, have actually very well polished photographs.
I remember saying that to my white male friend and he just couldn't understand why I wasn't getting as many hits per week as we was.
I am an outside too. I have a disability. For a long time, I felt like you describe, like the world is discriminating against me when it comes to dating (and a lot of other things).
Regarding dating I am pretty sure I was wrong.
It is not called discrimation, rather, it is called personal preference.
You can't force other people to choose you by claiming they are discriminating against you. That train of thought simply doesn't work.
I found this video to be fairly demeaning towards women. I got the sense of entitlement that he deserves to sleep with a certain number of women. He should be less set on the numbers and more focused on the women that do respond.
I haven't online dated in 10 years but I had more success when I focused more on quality than quantity.
As much as I appreciate your point, I've heard that dating is very much a numbers game for men, and that's not out of a misguided focus on quantity over quality. In online dating, it's extremely common to be in a situation where the other party, if they respond at all, seems unable to answer with anything but one-word responses, and it's diifficult or impossible to have a conversation like that. A focus on quantity is actually an optimisation, becuase to have a chance at quality you need quantity.
Women suffer precisely the opposite problem when dating online: a barrage of first messages, most of them low quality, from just about every man who has seen their profile. Therefore, the pressure on men to get anticipate and navigate this situation is even greater - either by sending a well thought out and canned message to multiple women (to beat the other men), or to spend a longer time customizing a message to each woman. The second is typically a losing strategy when the response rate is so low.
There are some good writeups using results from subreddits for dating on Reddit which iterate on this point. It's worth noting that Tinder is great for validation so long as you're getting a lot of messages. In fact, it's so good, I've heard of people simply swiping through matches because they enjoy the idea that so many people are into them. It's the dating version of the 'refresh your HN profile to see if you have more upvotes' game.
I'd like to end on another, related point. Often, people claim that men get so few matches and/or responses because they have a bad time taking photos of themselves, and tend not to bother nearly as much as women tend to. From what I can gather, this is far from the truth; most women's profiles and photos have just as bad craftsmanship as men's do.
I suspect this is one of the biggest changes in the dating world within the past 10 years.
The dating section starts at 1:52. He says he had days of swiping with no matches, whereas his white friends had matches.
The comment you’re replying to has completely misrepresented the video. You can’t focus on “quality” if you have no matches.
The dating comment was a ten second section of the video. Ironically, the conclusion of the story is the man realizes online dating doesn’t work for him and he focussed on quality dating in real life.
In my circle of friends I’m the de facto photographer and usually use my iPhone and while we all have the same technology the majority of my friends end up using the pictures i take of them. I think even with a flattened playing field technologically and near endless storage the ability to edit and see the best side of someone is still a valuable skill
Once everyone starts jumping the bandwagon, it's time to go out and do it the good old day by simply talking to people in various places. I think the success rate would be much higher considering nobody is really doing this anymore:)
I realize you can read irony into what I wrote. ;)
But it's actually true. In any social situation, we have layers of emotional defenses that we build up, and they're especially brought out in a portrait session. Am I attractive enough? Is my smile genuine enough? Am I confident enough? Am I trying too hard? Not enough? Am I wasting my money? Is this worth it? Should I just leave now and cut my losses? This makes us tense and pretty much as far away from our authentic emotional self as we can be -- and it shows on our face, clear as day.
The job of the headshot photographer is to undo all those layers so they can capture your expression when you feel totally at ease, believing in yourself, without all those worries and tensions layered on top. They're almost amateur psychologists or acting coaches in this way.
So I get why it seems ironic, but being emotionally authentic in an extremely artificial situation isn't a natural thing. It takes a lot of work. But it's still authentic -- it's not creating something fake, but rather working to bring out what's most real about you.
(At least, this is what the good headshot photographers do, which is why they make $$$. Bad/cheap photographers will just tell you to smile, get a forced uneasy expression from you, take a bunch of shots, ask you to choose one, and call it a day.)
It's the same way speaking on stage. There is absolutely nothing natural about getting up on a stage with hundreds or thousands of your "closest friends" looking on. And, yes, good speakers are acting at some level. But many/most of them are acting to get back some of the authentic interaction that would be there if there were talking to you individually over a beer.
I've seen plenty of awe-inspiring photography across many genres, but I have literally never seen a corporate headshot or a dating photo that does anything like this.
The closest not-really-corporate shots are probably the official NASA pre-launch astronaut portraits, which do indeed do a great job of humanising the astronauts.
But as soon as you see someone in a suit, you can pretty much guarantee they're going to be smiling a little too hard while trying and failing to hide that they're stiff, stressed, and guarded. Or possibly slightly dazed. Or overcompensating by trying to look in-control and dominant.
Grey, white or black studio background, corner window shot, corridor shot, water cooler shot, in-focus background, out-of-focus background - none of it seems to help.
Well, tons of them have just closed down and many more will. So they're definitely going somewhere -- to bankrupty.
The fact that a handful will still survive is not the same as "not going anywhere". We still have vinyl too, but it's 1/10th of what units it used to move...
Its all really cool technology, and I love the convenience of having a smartphone camera in my pocket, which I use often, for the right type of photography and when no other option is available. But right now you simply cant beat the results of a high end digital camera. The quality simply blows phone cameras out of the water in every conceivable way, even amateurs can tell the difference.
Having a professional photo can make a big difference. I can see how phones and technology has made it so that anyone can take photos. The studio takes a hit because people don't need to go. Much like a music studio. People can record at home, but the professional makes a difference. The internet is a tool to share the photographer's work (if properly branded). The internet has also made a huge supply of photos, so the general demand for quality has declined. Music is much the same. I have a belief that the demand for high quality, professional photos and music will come back in style at some point. It will come back to people happily paying for music or photos as it once was. You can't expect things to be free and also expect quality
Professional photographer here who does portraits and product. I’d say not “dead,” just very different.
We’ve taken a hit, yes, but mostly amongst the problematic clients who say things like “you shot this in 2 hours, why do I need to pay a whole day rate?” They go and shoot their stuff with a phone, it looks like garbage but in some way they can’t quite articulate but it’s good enough, and we’re happy to not have to deal with them any longer.
There is another segment, that of the client who bought a consumer crop-sensor DSLR and a white box off of Amazon and told us “hey sorry but anyone can do this now.” Or they picked up a cheap strobe kit and a lens that the blogs said had “creamy bokeh” and they can’t figure out what they’re doing wrong. Generally we see them slink back in a month or so later and quietly hire us back. This is very common.
Is the future scary? Yes. Am I sure I’ll be able to work as studio photographer forever? Nope. But as with anything, doing one’s homework and having a commitment to quality while paying attention to what’s happening in the photo world can keep you successful for the time being. The points addressed in the article are good ones and I try to stay up on all of it, but there are plenty of companies who still pay good money for photography don’t have access to the level of digital rendering that he’s talking about. They have a small product and a couple grand and they need a well-done photo in two days.
And yes, you can bang out something with a phone and an app or two, but it’s not “there” yet. Is it a privilege to hire a professional photographer for your headshot rather than something someone did on a phone? Of course. I’ve also shot plenty of headshots pro bono for aspiring folks who have a dream and work their asses off and can’t seem to get there, whether or not I was already set up for a paid shoot. My friends mostly do this as well.
Another end of the company I work for (I'm in media operations, digital) is focused on custom content which is largely comprised of marketing materials, catalogs, etc (and they still print on paper!).
The company actually maintains a selection modern photo studios solely for use within the company. The clients still want that kind of quality. (There are a couple of glimpses of their large studios in the slides on the homepage https://www.stjoseph.com/)
Of course, I can't speak for the entire industry—but it's not dead yet! At least in the less sexy areas like product shoots for grocery stores, or car promos.
I'm confused. Bokeh refers to the quality of the blur. Applying a filter to an originally sharp background (because of a deep depth of field) can absolutely simulate bokeh. It may be bad bokeh, but then plenty of lenses have bad out of focus rendering.
I’m only a “semi-serious” photographer at this point, but I’ve spent thousands of dollars in the past ten years based largely on the subjective quality of bokeh.
I’m actually not sure what I “normally” shoot at. I shoot manual and dynamically adjust my settings to the scene almost unconsciously.
Now I’m curious to see if I can run some statistics against my Lightroom library.
I shoot a Fujifilm X-E2, and am hoping to upgrade to an X-Pro3 fairly soon. I’ve put off upgrading my camera for years in favor of buying better glass.
My favorite/most used lens is a 23mm f/1.4. I know I rarely use it wide open unless I’m shooting at night, and in that case I’m also usually also shooting monochrome. That lens is awesome for low light and indoor candidates, and even with my generations-old X-E2 I have enough resolution (16MP) to crop in when I need to.
My next favorite is a 35mm f/2. With the crop factor, it’s ~50mm and nearly perfect for street photography. There is a quality to that lens that I have difficulty describing - the closest I can get is that it’s “Leica-like”.
I also recently picked up a used 18-55mm f/2.8-4. Zoom lenses aren’t really my thing, and variable-aperture zoom even less so. This lens was so cheap that it didn’t make sense not to buy it, and it’s turned out to be very capable as long as I’m outdoors in full light. It gives me a bit more reach, which is important sometimes for me. A lot of my photography is done either of my kids or for the dance studio I and my wife own, so while it’s not my favorite lens it does see quite a bit of use and is often the right tool for the job.
Examples:
XF23mmF1.4 R | ISO 400 | f/4 | 1/250s - Outdoor, stage shot of a dance performance: https://adobe.ly/3f9rbmH
XF23mmF1.4 R | ISO 1600 | f/2 | 1/60s - Indoor, with terrible lighting and a glossy background: https://adobe.ly/332b9IN
XF35mmF2 R WR | ISO 200 | f/8 | 1.170s - Outdoor, street photography in Cleveland: https://adobe.ly/2X6CTbk
XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS | ISO 1600 | f/4 | 1/500s - Outdoors, my youngest daughter riding a go-kart: https://adobe.ly/3f5o6Ec
I blame social media and mass low resolution consumption more than I blame smart phones for the shift in the media industry.
If I zoom in to almost any cell phone photo, it's no match for a professional with a larger format sensor or studio with lighting.
But those details are lost.
The appreciation for the craft has also faded. With so much media to create / consume, the bar has lowered across the board.
But industries that used to be profitable are hard to break into now. Food photography is a prime example. I recently did a shoot with a company and their chef convinced them they could just use cell phones in the future. I can't argue it. If the only place you're publishing to is 1800px and the content exists for 1-2 days on the front of your feed, it's pretty hard to justify a full crew and big production shoot. You have to really see your media / product as an investment and be gunning for a bigger picture to really gain a value out of a larger media operation.
I for one hate it when buying something online and the only photos posted are clearly done in a studio with lots of post-processing, or worse renderings. I end up having to look at user posted photos or ebay to see what the item truly looks like.
https://youtu.be/oSd0keSj2W8 here is a McDonald's marketing video on how they improve the burger for the shot. Of course that's marketing and they have other tools in addition, like not using real ingelredients but mocks etc.
Think the reality of fast food photography has some crossover to the subject, photo studios are less important because you can just take 200 photos with your own camera and then pick the 1 good shot from that.
With fast food photography, it's the same ingredients they just brute force it and have a whole stack of genuine buns, pickles, patties to pick the best of a bad bunch.
masona | 5 years ago
The article covers a lot of territory but I can say from experience that the limitations to current CGI techniques mean that automation is still a ways away.
I produced all the shots for a global diaper company that is on shelf today. The pack designs were a tough format: images needed to be extremely horizontal on one side, and vertical on the reverse. But you can't just ask the photographer to shoot wide and crop in, because the new HD Flexo printing is way more hi-res. The approach at the time was to take the baby imagery and 'paint in' the extra background in Photoshop, a very time-consuming process that had to be repeated for every single image for every single region, with wildly inconsistent results. We created a replica of the on-set nursery in CGI, all the way down to matching the lighting in the C4D studio.
Yes it made the process way more flexible, yes we could localize everything with a new render, and yes we could add props or change the decor. But every render required a human eye to match the camera angles/scale of the baby shots. The uncanny valley is real, even with all the little tricks you can do to make it seem more photorealistic.
I do like the idea of AI-generated baby faces - the casting process / ethnicity requirements / rights management challenges are real. And maybe it wouldn't be all that bad if everyone knew that the babies weren't human. But the cost to develop and manage that system require real experts, a huge expense for a company that only needs baby shoots every so often. I imagine a version of 'thisbabydoesntexist' and how that would even slot into the content production workflow - it feels impossible. It's much cheaper to outsource this stuff to production companies that are smart about how they capture all the different kinds of content.
There are definitely companies where CGI makes sense to develop in-house. IKEA's approach comes to mind since they have super modular and global approach to furniture. But most companies have such a big product turnover that photography is still cheaper. Don't even get me started on hard-to-render products that require serious expertise to visualize. We tried to develop a CGI diaper but wow it was insanely complex.
I'm optimistic about the future of the space since there is so much design territory to explore in terms of workflow improvements. But I still love something real - my wife is shooting a story for a national magazine today on a local woodworking artist and I know it could never in a million years be automated. The more that computational photography advances, the more important meatspace photography will become.
justjash | 5 years ago
This seems like a very difficult way to do things unless you really needed to mess with items in the background.
I would think there is still plenty of room to crop a single image down from something like a new Canon 1D. Even just making a composite image if really needed sounds much easier.
masona | 5 years ago
That's what the photographer was shooting and it is definitely not big enough to pull back and crop in later.
The only way to get files big enough is to shoot medium format, but you can't because the files are too large for rapid-fire.
deckard1 | 5 years ago
This really sounds like a use case for an anamorphic lens. Sure, it's a bit exotic for DSLR photography. But it certainly sounds like you had the budget for it.
pbhjpbhj | 5 years ago
1D (XII or XIII) is 20Mpx (at 20fps), curious what resolution you're printing the actual packaging at given this isn't enough.
I've done some packaging production for a micro-business - it would be really interesting to see how it's done at a large company from taking photos through to final product.
masona | 5 years ago
The resolution is fine if you're in close like we were. But then you lose out on the room details which were needed the final composition, hence the CGI extension. The resolution is only a problem if you shoot pulled back and then try to crop in later.
shard | 5 years ago
Could you clarify what you mean by rapid-fire? Are you talking about burst shots? What fps do you need and why?
masona | 5 years ago
It's not about fps, though the shutter was really fast since babies move a lot. That was hard to balance with the lighting because we couldn't fire strobes since it would freak them out.
Basically we were shooting a lot of captures really fast (but not quite burst shots) to get the perfect facial expression. Medium format camera digital back files are so huge that they can't cycle that fast. As it was, the photographer's team had to set up a system that got jpegs and RAWs at the same time: the jpegs were radioed into Capture One for immediate review, while the RAWs went to card and were imported afterwards. It was amazing to watch the team work. We had 30k captures after 5 days of shooting - it was a beast to edit down to 27 final shots.
shard | 5 years ago
It sounds like a memory card write speed limitation, is that correct? I've seen medium format cameras advertised with 5fps bursts (not sure on burst length), but if it takes 30 seconds between bursts to write to the memory card, that would drastically slow down the capture rate.
masona | 5 years ago
Exactly. The thing is, even shooting tethered with medium format, the pipe just isn't big enough to keep up and the computer and/or capture software gets bogged down, too.
VLM | 5 years ago
Its an interesting tech study but don't forget the business side. I'm so incredibly old (LOL being sarcastic) that I remember high school yearbooks had school photographers for K-11 however seniors had to submit professional photographer pictures.
You see it had only been made illegal a generation ago to submit a photo with every resume. In theory, photos were submitted to see if the applicant could clean up and dress in a professional stylish manner. It was made illegal in the 60s for very theoretical discrimination reasons. As if during an interview a manager wouldn't notice an applicant was black or a woman, but via the miracle of photography they could notice, LOL.
Anyway culture and especially the ed establishment moves slowly so they were still preparing kids to submit photos with their resumes in the 80s despite it being illegal since the 60s. So seniors had to submit photos.
Anyway the whole point of this anecdote is culture moves slow, and until "recently" if you wanted to graduate HS and get a job you needed a zillion copies of yourself from a professional studio.
Also see Department of the Army standard "DA photo" for promotion packets, and the peculiar government requirements of passport photos. The days of 50% of the male population having served in the military are long gone with the WWII vets, the population as a whole, countrywide, is getting waaaay too poor to internationally travel thus no need for passports, etc.
cosmodisk | 5 years ago
It's a bit funny how it's illegal to submit CV with a photo( in most countries,at least) yet the second some HR drone opens your CV, they'd go on LinkedIn or other platforms to check what's going on.
ido | 5 years ago
Submitting CV with a photo is actually an expectation in the German speaking countries!
crmrc114 | 5 years ago
Can someone on HN explain why some links to medium try to make me setup an account to read while others go to a clean well designed blog style post, the way they should.
Is this a setting based on popularity of the article? who is posting?
crazygringo | 5 years ago
I think it's based on how often you visit Medium. If it's your first time visiting in a ~month, you just see the article. If it's your ~third time, they ask for an account.
Just open the URL in an incognito window when you get that -- it's what I do.
recursivecaveat | 5 years ago
Some medium articles are 'medium exclusive' (I don't remember the exact term). In theory, only people paying for a medium membership can view them, but in return they get a little more juice in medium's internal advertising. Many people inadvertently choose this setting because of some dark patterns around the publishing interface. Everyone gets a couple views of the members-only articles a month free, functionally infinite if you use incognito mode. I think there's also a random pop-up to harass you into using the app/an-account which is orthogonal.
hownottowrite | 5 years ago
I’ve run a creative studio as well an an independent photography practice for many years and much of what this article says about the future is true. The main driver here is to reduce costs and increase output by removing the human element. It gets closer each and every day.
But at the same time, the high end keeps getting higher and that’s why the photo studio is still going to be around for a long, long time.
TOGoS | 5 years ago
'computational photography' is interesting because it requires a different way of thinking about what an image is than what we were used to. As if going through a certain shaped lens is the only way to make "real" photos.
My own thinking on the subject got severely reshaped when I took it upon myself to write some alternative lens models for Chunky[1] (the Minecraft scene path-tracer) and later my own path-tracer[2]. Once I realized that every pixel on the screen could be mapped to any virtual light-sensor position and direction, suddenly projections were arbitrary. I could define a lens that wrapped around the subject, pointing inwards if I wanted, and that was no less 'real' than a pinhole or fisheye lens.
Of course modern phones take things a bit further than just straightforward transformations. Guessing what's between the pixels or selectively blending multiple images together maybe crosses my subjective threshold between what I think of as a 'real image' and a 'made-up' one. Especially as the AI gets smarter. Because I can no longer understand exactly what happened.
[1] https://chunky.llbit.se/ [2] https://github.com/TOGoS/SolidTree/
ChrisMarshallNY | 5 years ago
I feel as if we will see fewer, but far better, pro photographers.
It will probably be some time before we have AI-assisted composition and lighting, and that's the real secret sauce of high-impact photography.
That kind of thing comes from having an emotional being in charge of the photography device. They "feel" the image, as much as they "see" the image, and know how to capture it in a way that will have others feel the power of the image.
That is what separates the pros from the amateurs.
But those pros now have some truly marvelous tools to help them to capture that emotion.
This is like the growth of CGI. When the tools first appeared, they were high geek-factor monsters that only an engineer could use, so only engineers used them, with predictable results. That resulted in some technically marvelous, but not particularly enjoyable, stuff[0].
Then John Lasseter and Pixar happened. Anyone remember the "Luxo Jr." animation?[1] That was where the world changed.
For the first time, emotion was reflected in CGI. Nowadays, true artists can do amazing things with tools like Blender, Maya and After Effects. There are now feature-length CGI movies that can have 300-lb cage fighters sobbing in their beer.
Until AI can produce emotions (shudder at the thought), there will always be a need for pro emotional craftsmen. The tools and medium may change, but artists have been around since the days of the Maltravieso Gallery.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4NPQ8mfKU0
scandox | 5 years ago
Perhaps slightly OT but nonetheless interesting.
I met a former professional photographer who had become an economic analyst. He used to do fashion and music shoots for major magazines (Conde Nast etc..). He gave me an interesting insight into why his former business collapsed.
First of all he said that his photography business was predicated on the fact that he held the whip hand with respect to his clients: they needed to be absolutely sure that the person they sent out got the right shots on the day. There wasn't going to be another opportunity to ask Bono or whoever to do them over. So Conde Nast had to be absolutely sure that he would produce the goods. For him to be good enough to be sure of always getting the shots no matter the conditions, weather, light conditions etc...the photographer had to have the requisite experience and the only way traditionally they could get that experience was by using up a lot of film. In his view the cost of the film you would need to go through to have got to his level was approximately £60,000. That was the barrier to entry.
With the barrier to entry and with his strong position with respect to his customers he got two important things: a high level of pay and royalties on renewals for his work. So they not only paid him but he had an ongoing revenue for shots they had paid him to take, if they wanted to reuse them over time.
Once Digital got good enough, the barrier to entry fell and the magazines slowly gained the upper hand, paid less and didn't agree to the same terms.
So now he advises Banks on something or other.
ekianjo | 5 years ago
> It will then add a blur to that background to simulate Bokeh.
Yeah, and it looks completely awful and utterly fake. The author forgot to mention that 'detail'.
Sebb767 | 5 years ago
> and it looks completely awful and utterly fake
To people who know good Bokeh. Your average user is pretty used to the fake one.
ekianjo | 5 years ago
You will easily notice it as the edges are usually completely wrong.
grumbel | 5 years ago
None of that loss of detail matters much once the image is scaled down to Internet-typical resolutions. Doesn't help that photographers often don't even give you access to the full resolution images, so even if you make use of one, you don't end up with something that is superior to whatever your phone-AI can fake together.
whywhywhywhy | 5 years ago
In general it seems utterly bizarre the obsession with the press and users about how hyped the new iPhone camera is every year when all the photos and videos end up on Instagram that compresses everything to a smudge of jpeg/mp4 compression marks anyway.
Surprised we haven't had a social network where the gimmick is just high quality photo and video that actually looks as good once it's uploaded as it did on your monitor.
spideymans | 5 years ago
Go back and look at Instagram or Vine posts from five to seven years ago, and compare them to today. The improvement in image and video quality is dramatic.
We just don’t think the improvement in imaging is a big deal, as year-over-year improvements are minor.
crazygringo | 5 years ago
Counterpoint: as your online identity becomes more and more of your brand, the need for a professional, high-quality headshot is more important than ever.
(Less so for full-time engineers, but absolutely for management, sales, consultants, etc.)
Headshot photographers not only provide crucial professional lighting expertly adjusted for the contours of your face, but also have a grab bag of techniques to establish rapport and get an authentic, confident, warm expression out of you that is almost impossible to get otherwise for most people. Not to mention work with you to get the right tone and look -- the background and lighting and expression a quirky food blogger needs will be totally different from a conservative CEO, which again is totally different from Brooklyn fiction author.
And because of people's need to brand themselves online, headshot photographers who 20 years ago had actors as 95% of their business, now have business professionals as a majority of their clients. Business is booming.
The photo studio isn't going anywhere -- it's just changing what and who we need to take photos of.
regulation_d | 5 years ago
Counterpoint to your counterpoint: the prevalence of inexpensive off-camera light kits means it's much easier than it used to be to get the kind of lighting you want, where you want it (i.e. somewhere less sterile than a studio). None of the photographers I know have studios, but they all have great strobe kits and are quite skilled at creating the kind of light you're talking about outdoors or in some other interesting location.
ChuckNorris89 | 5 years ago
You forgot dating.
Since it has moved online, my younger male friends have spent quite a lot of money on professional photographers(not in studios, but outdoors) to get that perfect candid shot at dusk in their new attire, hoping for an edge in the overcrowded dating market.
Thanks to tinder and Instagram, dating is now a continuous arms race for young males and I assume it comes with it's own set of potential mental illnesses.
annpierce | 5 years ago
Can confirm as my startup addresses this market [https://www.photofeeler.com].
The top dating apps are designed such that photos are literally all that matter. What's worse is all of the popular cultural ideas we have about photos are wrong.
Photos don't just show people accurately -- in fact, you need some level of skill just to look as attractive as you do in real life. So no, that unsmiling selfie you took in your basement isn't "just what you look like" or "authentic."
Not to mention, people think and do. Images are still. This creates a situation where humanity can be easily lost. And where the need to brand yourself and put a lot of effort into showing hobbies etc. is paramount.
It's sad to see so many young guys tie their identities to the good or bad performance of their profiles when it's not really them being judged but the pictures they chose.
jfengel | 5 years ago
Proper photography is important, and a sense of personality is needed to start a conversation.
There are differences in the way men and women are expected to behave on Tinder and elsewhere, but a critical step is getting past "your photo is worth a swipe" to having something to say to each other. Many women will delete you if you have nothing better to open with than "hi". You are expected to actually look at the photos (and read the text) so that they feel you are actually interested in them.
They want to know something about you, too. Action shots, backgrounds, even just your smile says a lot. Taking the time and thought to get a good photo will attract more interest than just a random selfie. But it's more than just being the best approximation to ideal maleness. It's a sense that you are a person worth hanging out with.
If you can teach this to men, awesome. I would say that I found some of the portraits on your front page a little stiff. One had a purely black background, and while an attractive photo in itself it was a blank about personality.
impendia | 5 years ago
Thanks for sharing. This looks interesting, and I might end up using it in the future. (Right now I'm holing up due to the pandemic, and not venturing out; later, I plan to get on the various online dating apps that are out there.)
Some feedback:
1. When I click "Get Started", I'm presented with bright blue "Sign up with Facebook" and "Sign up with LinkedIn" buttons, and a small faint "Sign up with email" which I can barely read. Why is this?
I feel like Facebook is selling everything I do to the Russians. Or... something. :) In any case I don't trust social login, and by extension I tend not to trust websites which push me to social login.
2. Out of curiosity I created an account, didn't upload any photos, but started rating other people. Immediately afterwards, I'd love to see how others rated the same photos. I'd learn something interesting about how people present themselves.
3. After rating 20 or so photos I got accused of "poor vote quality", with "Our AI has detected randomness or patterns in your votes." Ummm... huh? By definition, any data will always either be random or have patterns. Anyway, I got chided for doing something-or-other wrong, with a request to vote better (how?).
I recognize there's a problem here -- you don't want people to just give everyone top ratings on everything, because they just want to increase their own credits. Nevertheless, at this point I got discouraged and stopped.
Looks like a cool idea! Good luck with it.
annpierce | 5 years ago
Not all poor quality voting is conscious/malicious. An individual with alexithymia, for example, might give unuseful feedback despite their best effort.
impendia | 5 years ago
What, then, do you consider "poor" or "unuseful"?
saddestcatever | 5 years ago
I really love the idea of photofeeler, and I want it to work.
Just to share my 2c: I can't get over how strange the pricing structure for photofeeler is. I've come to the site a few times with my credit card ready, willing to drop a few dollars to get results.... but the abstraction of your pricing model is just confusing enough that I've dropped off the funnel each time.
Ok, so I need credits or karma to run a test. So I answer a few photos, get my karma to medium, and leave the test over night. The results are often inconclusive - my photos are consistently rating as "meh->ok" across the board. Ok, that's fine, I'll try another. Upload another, get more karma, leave that over night. Ok, this photo has +.8 attractiveness, but -.6 smart. Ok, not sure what to do with that information, but it's intriguing. The results are close enough, that I'm curious what the margin of error is if each is getting ~10 votes.
Ok, well maybe this is just the downside of the freemium model. Let's take a look and see what I can buy. 40 credits for $10. Ok, so 1 credit is .25c. Cool. What's a credit get me. A CREDIT GETS ME ONE VOTE! Ok, hold on, that can't be right.
Let's think about this backwards. How many credits do I need? So I probly want 15-20 votes on any one photo to get enough data to be conclusive about the results. Sure. And I'll want to run at least 3 photos. So, I'm looking at $15 per test to know which of 3 photos is preferred.... but realistically if I want to get rid of my own biases, I'd be testing 5-10 photos... Hmmmmm.
At this point I do some work to get some free karma (note: if there were hotkeys for voting it would make a WORLD of difference).... leave the test over night. Look at it the next day, say "meh, results are inconclusive based on sample size" and forget about the site for 8 months.
annpierce | 5 years ago
Thanks, will pass on. I think 1 vote = 1 credit used to be clearer.
TheOtherHobbes | 5 years ago
Perhaps there's an opportunity for a startup to automate and simplify this.
annpierce | 5 years ago
Photofeeler will go that way: https://blog.photofeeler.com/photofeeler-d3/
Wistar | 5 years ago
You probably have already thought about this—and it is a bit of a derail—but it seems to me that a "veriface" service that provides attestations, or some combination of verifications, as to the accuracy with which a photo represents someone could be useful.
"Yeah, that's him… 10 years ago."
bryanrasmussen | 5 years ago
>Ok, this photo has +.8 attractiveness, but -.6 smart. Ok, not sure what to do with that information
Use that photo for dating, but not for potential employers, unless you're searching for a modeling job - just my guess.
PaywallBuster | 5 years ago
You can choose different categories (work, casual, dating) but all of them have 3 characteristic which you're voting for.
If I remember these 2 are part of dating
colmvp | 5 years ago
In practice, I think what matters a lot though especially for guys is ones ethnicity, especially for Asian men. I think that rarely gets mentioned in these discussions.
This Asian male model's story of online dating is pretty much my experience as well as the experience of my other Asian male friends, except while he's obviously very physically attractive, I'm not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAo_mZMIUgg
Having a nicer headshot didn't change any of that, including for some of my male Asian friends who are also models and thus, have actually very well polished photographs.
I remember saying that to my white male friend and he just couldn't understand why I wasn't getting as many hits per week as we was.
mlang23 | 5 years ago
I am an outside too. I have a disability. For a long time, I felt like you describe, like the world is discriminating against me when it comes to dating (and a lot of other things). Regarding dating I am pretty sure I was wrong. It is not called discrimation, rather, it is called personal preference. You can't force other people to choose you by claiming they are discriminating against you. That train of thought simply doesn't work.
rticesterp | 5 years ago
I found this video to be fairly demeaning towards women. I got the sense of entitlement that he deserves to sleep with a certain number of women. He should be less set on the numbers and more focused on the women that do respond.
I haven't online dated in 10 years but I had more success when I focused more on quality than quantity.
claudiawerner | 5 years ago
As much as I appreciate your point, I've heard that dating is very much a numbers game for men, and that's not out of a misguided focus on quantity over quality. In online dating, it's extremely common to be in a situation where the other party, if they respond at all, seems unable to answer with anything but one-word responses, and it's diifficult or impossible to have a conversation like that. A focus on quantity is actually an optimisation, becuase to have a chance at quality you need quantity.
Women suffer precisely the opposite problem when dating online: a barrage of first messages, most of them low quality, from just about every man who has seen their profile. Therefore, the pressure on men to get anticipate and navigate this situation is even greater - either by sending a well thought out and canned message to multiple women (to beat the other men), or to spend a longer time customizing a message to each woman. The second is typically a losing strategy when the response rate is so low.
There are some good writeups using results from subreddits for dating on Reddit which iterate on this point. It's worth noting that Tinder is great for validation so long as you're getting a lot of messages. In fact, it's so good, I've heard of people simply swiping through matches because they enjoy the idea that so many people are into them. It's the dating version of the 'refresh your HN profile to see if you have more upvotes' game.
I'd like to end on another, related point. Often, people claim that men get so few matches and/or responses because they have a bad time taking photos of themselves, and tend not to bother nearly as much as women tend to. From what I can gather, this is far from the truth; most women's profiles and photos have just as bad craftsmanship as men's do.
I suspect this is one of the biggest changes in the dating world within the past 10 years.
CarbyAu | 5 years ago
Thanks for saving me time watching the video.
graeme | 5 years ago
The dating section starts at 1:52. He says he had days of swiping with no matches, whereas his white friends had matches.
The comment you’re replying to has completely misrepresented the video. You can’t focus on “quality” if you have no matches.
The dating comment was a ten second section of the video. Ironically, the conclusion of the story is the man realizes online dating doesn’t work for him and he focussed on quality dating in real life.
werber | 5 years ago
In my circle of friends I’m the de facto photographer and usually use my iPhone and while we all have the same technology the majority of my friends end up using the pictures i take of them. I think even with a flattened playing field technologically and near endless storage the ability to edit and see the best side of someone is still a valuable skill
cosmodisk | 5 years ago
Once everyone starts jumping the bandwagon, it's time to go out and do it the good old day by simply talking to people in various places. I think the success rate would be much higher considering nobody is really doing this anymore:)
normalnorm | 5 years ago
> and get an authentic
Man, the "silicon valley" writers are crushing it today!
crazygringo | 5 years ago
I realize you can read irony into what I wrote. ;)
But it's actually true. In any social situation, we have layers of emotional defenses that we build up, and they're especially brought out in a portrait session. Am I attractive enough? Is my smile genuine enough? Am I confident enough? Am I trying too hard? Not enough? Am I wasting my money? Is this worth it? Should I just leave now and cut my losses? This makes us tense and pretty much as far away from our authentic emotional self as we can be -- and it shows on our face, clear as day.
The job of the headshot photographer is to undo all those layers so they can capture your expression when you feel totally at ease, believing in yourself, without all those worries and tensions layered on top. They're almost amateur psychologists or acting coaches in this way.
So I get why it seems ironic, but being emotionally authentic in an extremely artificial situation isn't a natural thing. It takes a lot of work. But it's still authentic -- it's not creating something fake, but rather working to bring out what's most real about you.
(At least, this is what the good headshot photographers do, which is why they make $$$. Bad/cheap photographers will just tell you to smile, get a forced uneasy expression from you, take a bunch of shots, ask you to choose one, and call it a day.)
ghaff | 5 years ago
It's the same way speaking on stage. There is absolutely nothing natural about getting up on a stage with hundreds or thousands of your "closest friends" looking on. And, yes, good speakers are acting at some level. But many/most of them are acting to get back some of the authentic interaction that would be there if there were talking to you individually over a beer.
TheOtherHobbes | 5 years ago
I've seen plenty of awe-inspiring photography across many genres, but I have literally never seen a corporate headshot or a dating photo that does anything like this.
The closest not-really-corporate shots are probably the official NASA pre-launch astronaut portraits, which do indeed do a great job of humanising the astronauts.
But as soon as you see someone in a suit, you can pretty much guarantee they're going to be smiling a little too hard while trying and failing to hide that they're stiff, stressed, and guarded. Or possibly slightly dazed. Or overcompensating by trying to look in-control and dominant.
Grey, white or black studio background, corner window shot, corridor shot, water cooler shot, in-focus background, out-of-focus background - none of it seems to help.
coldtea | 5 years ago
>The photo studio isn't going anywhere
Well, tons of them have just closed down and many more will. So they're definitely going somewhere -- to bankrupty.
The fact that a handful will still survive is not the same as "not going anywhere". We still have vinyl too, but it's 1/10th of what units it used to move...
the-dude | 5 years ago
The birth of the Video Studio.
imagetic | 5 years ago
Already dead too.
syntheno | 5 years ago
Its all really cool technology, and I love the convenience of having a smartphone camera in my pocket, which I use often, for the right type of photography and when no other option is available. But right now you simply cant beat the results of a high end digital camera. The quality simply blows phone cameras out of the water in every conceivable way, even amateurs can tell the difference.
SeanFerree | 5 years ago
Having a professional photo can make a big difference. I can see how phones and technology has made it so that anyone can take photos. The studio takes a hit because people don't need to go. Much like a music studio. People can record at home, but the professional makes a difference. The internet is a tool to share the photographer's work (if properly branded). The internet has also made a huge supply of photos, so the general demand for quality has declined. Music is much the same. I have a belief that the demand for high quality, professional photos and music will come back in style at some point. It will come back to people happily paying for music or photos as it once was. You can't expect things to be free and also expect quality
ruminasean | 5 years ago
Professional photographer here who does portraits and product. I’d say not “dead,” just very different.
We’ve taken a hit, yes, but mostly amongst the problematic clients who say things like “you shot this in 2 hours, why do I need to pay a whole day rate?” They go and shoot their stuff with a phone, it looks like garbage but in some way they can’t quite articulate but it’s good enough, and we’re happy to not have to deal with them any longer.
There is another segment, that of the client who bought a consumer crop-sensor DSLR and a white box off of Amazon and told us “hey sorry but anyone can do this now.” Or they picked up a cheap strobe kit and a lens that the blogs said had “creamy bokeh” and they can’t figure out what they’re doing wrong. Generally we see them slink back in a month or so later and quietly hire us back. This is very common.
Is the future scary? Yes. Am I sure I’ll be able to work as studio photographer forever? Nope. But as with anything, doing one’s homework and having a commitment to quality while paying attention to what’s happening in the photo world can keep you successful for the time being. The points addressed in the article are good ones and I try to stay up on all of it, but there are plenty of companies who still pay good money for photography don’t have access to the level of digital rendering that he’s talking about. They have a small product and a couple grand and they need a well-done photo in two days.
And yes, you can bang out something with a phone and an app or two, but it’s not “there” yet. Is it a privilege to hire a professional photographer for your headshot rather than something someone did on a phone? Of course. I’ve also shot plenty of headshots pro bono for aspiring folks who have a dream and work their asses off and can’t seem to get there, whether or not I was already set up for a paid shoot. My friends mostly do this as well.
52-6F-62 | 5 years ago
Another end of the company I work for (I'm in media operations, digital) is focused on custom content which is largely comprised of marketing materials, catalogs, etc (and they still print on paper!).
The company actually maintains a selection modern photo studios solely for use within the company. The clients still want that kind of quality. (There are a couple of glimpses of their large studios in the slides on the homepage https://www.stjoseph.com/)
Of course, I can't speak for the entire industry—but it's not dead yet! At least in the less sexy areas like product shoots for grocery stores, or car promos.
tomaszdiesel | 5 years ago
> It will then add a blur to that background to simulate Bokeh.
and yet again a blog post about photography where the author can't differentiate between bokeh and depth of field.
gerikson | 5 years ago
I'm confused. Bokeh refers to the quality of the blur. Applying a filter to an originally sharp background (because of a deep depth of field) can absolutely simulate bokeh. It may be bad bokeh, but then plenty of lenses have bad out of focus rendering.
LyndsySimon | 5 years ago
I’m only a “semi-serious” photographer at this point, but I’ve spent thousands of dollars in the past ten years based largely on the subjective quality of bokeh.
gerikson | 5 years ago
I tend to shoot at f/5.6 unless the light is low.
LyndsySimon | 5 years ago
I’m actually not sure what I “normally” shoot at. I shoot manual and dynamically adjust my settings to the scene almost unconsciously.
Now I’m curious to see if I can run some statistics against my Lightroom library.
I shoot a Fujifilm X-E2, and am hoping to upgrade to an X-Pro3 fairly soon. I’ve put off upgrading my camera for years in favor of buying better glass.
My favorite/most used lens is a 23mm f/1.4. I know I rarely use it wide open unless I’m shooting at night, and in that case I’m also usually also shooting monochrome. That lens is awesome for low light and indoor candidates, and even with my generations-old X-E2 I have enough resolution (16MP) to crop in when I need to.
My next favorite is a 35mm f/2. With the crop factor, it’s ~50mm and nearly perfect for street photography. There is a quality to that lens that I have difficulty describing - the closest I can get is that it’s “Leica-like”.
I also recently picked up a used 18-55mm f/2.8-4. Zoom lenses aren’t really my thing, and variable-aperture zoom even less so. This lens was so cheap that it didn’t make sense not to buy it, and it’s turned out to be very capable as long as I’m outdoors in full light. It gives me a bit more reach, which is important sometimes for me. A lot of my photography is done either of my kids or for the dance studio I and my wife own, so while it’s not my favorite lens it does see quite a bit of use and is often the right tool for the job.
Examples:
XF23mmF1.4 R | ISO 400 | f/4 | 1/250s - Outdoor, stage shot of a dance performance: https://adobe.ly/3f9rbmH
XF23mmF1.4 R | ISO 1600 | f/2 | 1/60s - Indoor, with terrible lighting and a glossy background: https://adobe.ly/332b9IN
XF35mmF2 R WR | ISO 200 | f/8 | 1.170s - Outdoor, street photography in Cleveland: https://adobe.ly/2X6CTbk
XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS | ISO 1600 | f/4 | 1/500s - Outdoors, my youngest daughter riding a go-kart: https://adobe.ly/3f5o6Ec
gerikson | 5 years ago
Thanks for sharing these!
This is my page with my lenses, it includes links to the relevant Flickr pages for most of the lenses: http://gerikson.com/blog/photo/Lens-list.html
[Deleted] | 5 years ago
have_faith | 5 years ago
The concepts are interlinked, no need to take offence.
imagetic | 5 years ago
I blame social media and mass low resolution consumption more than I blame smart phones for the shift in the media industry.
If I zoom in to almost any cell phone photo, it's no match for a professional with a larger format sensor or studio with lighting.
But those details are lost.
The appreciation for the craft has also faded. With so much media to create / consume, the bar has lowered across the board.
But industries that used to be profitable are hard to break into now. Food photography is a prime example. I recently did a shoot with a company and their chef convinced them they could just use cell phones in the future. I can't argue it. If the only place you're publishing to is 1800px and the content exists for 1-2 days on the front of your feed, it's pretty hard to justify a full crew and big production shoot. You have to really see your media / product as an investment and be gunning for a bigger picture to really gain a value out of a larger media operation.
chiffre01 | 5 years ago
I for one hate it when buying something online and the only photos posted are clearly done in a studio with lots of post-processing, or worse renderings. I end up having to look at user posted photos or ebay to see what the item truly looks like.
Wistar | 5 years ago
There used to be a site that showed the advertising version of a fast-food item versus the reality of that item as delivered to your hand.
Dramatic difference.
johannes1234321 | 5 years ago
https://youtu.be/oSd0keSj2W8 here is a McDonald's marketing video on how they improve the burger for the shot. Of course that's marketing and they have other tools in addition, like not using real ingelredients but mocks etc.
whywhywhywhy | 5 years ago
Think the reality of fast food photography has some crossover to the subject, photo studios are less important because you can just take 200 photos with your own camera and then pick the 1 good shot from that.
With fast food photography, it's the same ingredients they just brute force it and have a whole stack of genuine buns, pickles, patties to pick the best of a bad bunch.