I would mostly agree with the premise, but I am somewhat in doubt that the person the author is talking about actually exists. I've never seen anyone, even the most diehard AI enthusiasts, call...
I would mostly agree with the premise, but I am somewhat in doubt that the person the author is talking about actually exists. I've never seen anyone, even the most diehard AI enthusiasts, call themselves a "photographer". I feel like if this was actually common, as the author purports, they could find a written record of at least one person who said this, even if just on social media.
For the rest of it, it just reminds me of a certain type of photographic elitism.
For background context if you don't know, but there's a lot of snobbery and elitism in photography, and the author's main talking points mirror a lot of the common ones a particular type of street photographer likes to have. The author's definition of street photography closely aligns with the (infamous) Bruce Gilden - street photography is about candid moments, in the face of human subjects, shot with a wide lens.
But that really isn't all that's to street photography, and it hasn't been for decades. Pioneers like Saul Leiter crafted a new kind of street photography, for instance, really using lights and perspective as artistic tools to craft abstract images. Recently, there's been a surge in street shot with a longer lens, often 85mm or above, long enough to be classified as telephoto. A lot of Bruce Gilden-types will look down on those types of street photography, because you're not bothering enough people. I think it's pretty silly.
There are "imposters" in literally every field -- how is it a stretch to think that someone might fancy themselves a photographer in this particular way? I've met people that call themselves...
There are "imposters" in literally every field -- how is it a stretch to think that someone might fancy themselves a photographer in this particular way? I've met people that call themselves "engineers" because "Prompt Engineer" is now a thing. Ok, sure.
His argument is about semantics. Your argument is about semantics. Neither is invalid. It means that not everyone agrees upon the definition of these terms, and because the meaning is clearly important to many people, we need to come up with new, more-precise terms. That is the only way around it.
The current terms are not intuitive and are imprecise. Let's adapt.
I would mostly agree with the premise, but I am somewhat in doubt that the person the author is talking about actually exists. I've never seen anyone, even the most diehard AI enthusiasts, call themselves a "photographer". I feel like if this was actually common, as the author purports, they could find a written record of at least one person who said this, even if just on social media.
For the rest of it, it just reminds me of a certain type of photographic elitism.
For background context if you don't know, but there's a lot of snobbery and elitism in photography, and the author's main talking points mirror a lot of the common ones a particular type of street photographer likes to have. The author's definition of street photography closely aligns with the (infamous) Bruce Gilden - street photography is about candid moments, in the face of human subjects, shot with a wide lens.
But that really isn't all that's to street photography, and it hasn't been for decades. Pioneers like Saul Leiter crafted a new kind of street photography, for instance, really using lights and perspective as artistic tools to craft abstract images. Recently, there's been a surge in street shot with a longer lens, often 85mm or above, long enough to be classified as telephoto. A lot of Bruce Gilden-types will look down on those types of street photography, because you're not bothering enough people. I think it's pretty silly.
There are "imposters" in literally every field -- how is it a stretch to think that someone might fancy themselves a photographer in this particular way? I've met people that call themselves "engineers" because "Prompt Engineer" is now a thing. Ok, sure.
His argument is about semantics. Your argument is about semantics. Neither is invalid. It means that not everyone agrees upon the definition of these terms, and because the meaning is clearly important to many people, we need to come up with new, more-precise terms. That is the only way around it.
The current terms are not intuitive and are imprecise. Let's adapt.