Photography is Dead

How technology killed the art

I originally wrote this piece for Sibat in 2010, and set the story 21 years into the future. I reasoned that if I had the story take place when I was an old man (age 40), it would leave plenty of time for my predictions to come true. But little did I know that it would be the year 2013, not 2031, when my vision of the future would become a reality. While some of the more extreme technological advancements that I predicted (wireless energy, infinite digital storage) are still just theories and may not be physically possible, most of the other features that I envisioned have been included in camera phones released this year. So now, the debate of technology versus skilled art is more relevant than ever before. No matter what you decide, just keep shooting.

Walking into Yankee Stadium you are filled with excitement to see the 15-time defending World Champions on their home turf. But looking at your tickets your excitement begins to fade as you realise that your seats are in section Z152, all the way in the upper deck. As you take your seat, beer in hand, you look down on what appears to be ants scurrying around on a miniature baseball field. There is no way those are humans.

So you pull out your camera to get a closer look. You’ve never used a camera before, but you figure it can’t be too complicated, and you give it a try. There is a loud CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK while you snap away a few pictures. Just then, people begin to laugh. Looking around, it’s quite obvious they’re laughing at you. “Must be a Boston fan!”, shouts one heckler. “Where’d you find that old piece of trash!”, yells another.

The trash they are referring to is your camera, a Canon 7D, a gigantic ancient relic that was passed down to you from your grandfather. Sure, it’s old, but you think to yourself, “18 megapixels, 8 frames per second, and it does video… it can’t be THAT bad.” But you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Your friend Chris notices what you are doing and jabs you in the side, “Put that thing away, you’re embarrassing us.” Confused, you tuck away your camera and Chris pulls a thin shiny tube out of his pocket.

“Now THIS is a camera. Brand new. Nikon just released it over the weekend. Check it out.” He raises the tube up to his eye, points it down at the field, and then points at you. You hold your smile, waiting for the CLICK… but it doesn’t come. Silence. “What are you waiting for? Take the picture! My jaw is getting sore from smiling!”

“I’m done, you idiot,” says Chris, shaking his head at you in disgust. He lowers his camera and points it at the back of the chair in front of you, projecting a 3D hologram video that he had just recorded. When he gets to the part of the video with you awkwardly smiling he pauses it, zooms in on your face, and hits the “Save” button. A split-second later, your phone buzzes: a new picture from Chris. It is crystal clear and the quality is so good that you can zoom in on the individual hairs on your head. Not that you want to see that. But now are you confused. He said he was taking pictures, but there was no shutter clicking. Then he showed you a video, but sent you a picture from that video. What is going on here?

Here is the answer: You are in the year 2031. Photography has long been dead, and along with it the old SLR camera’s, and their bulky interchangeable lenses. The new super devices have an integrated lens that covers the entire spectrum from macro to 1000mm. And instead of shooting individual stills, it shoots a continuous stream of super high resolution video at over 1000 frames per second. The incredible frame rate enables you to select individual frames from your video to use as pictures. And because the video is so high in resolution, you can create multiple pictures from different parts of a single frame, something that was unimaginable back in 2010.

Forget about the fact that you can store near-infinite amounts of data on your super camera. And forget about the fact that all batteries have finally been eliminated by Tesla’s 130-year-old theories, which reduces the weight of the camera by over 80%. Forget about the hologram projection, and forget about the 1000fps.

These are all great features, but what is important here is that photography as we know it today will be dead. The skill of composing a picture will become a lost art. People will think that the Sunny 16 Rule refers not to shooting, but to sixteen-year-olds sunbathing. The “Kodak moment” has become extinct. No more trying to time the perfect shot, spending hours attempting to capture the perfect moment. Just hold up your camera and you won’t miss a thing.

The only question is, do we really want this? Surely, most photographers shudder at the suggestion of such a future. This super device would eliminate the need for any talent in photography. However, the change is inevitable.

Just as camera phones have made basic photography accessible to the general population, this device will make professional-quality photography accessible to amateurs and professionals alike. And so the art of photography dies a slow and quiet death, engulfed by the over-saturation of pictures that require not talent, but nothing more than a little technology.