I hear that the next generation of cameras are going to have fish eyeball AF detection, automatic pet fur contrast as well as automatic nose correction.

Probably not true, but nothing would surprise me any more. Cameras have achieved their design goals of having more resolution than anyone can see on screen or print, and having more automation than most past space programs. The premise is that all this automatic foo foo dust encourages “creativity”.

I call bullshit.

I expect some folks will be offended bu this article, and I am ok with that. I think automation is a terrific thing if one’s malformed idea of making images is the snapshot, but automation has as much to do with creativity as to paraphrase Gloria Steinem, bicycles bring value to fish.

Making an image does not happen in the camera. It happens in the mind of the human being deciding what to photograph, how to compose the image, what exposure best serves the planned outcome, defining the subject, the depth of field and timing the shutter squeeze for maximum emotional contact.

None of these things can be done by a piece of technology. And certainly not by any barfeteria or puke factory AI copy machine that steals elements of a human’s work to produce its pile of vomit.

Features and functions do not make one a photographer. A camera that stores a hundred images before and after the shutter squeeze is a panacea for lousy timing and a boon for laziness.

Great photographers for decades managed to make brilliant images rich in emotion and story without any automation at all. Many learned how to read the light to determine exposure and made shutter speed, and aperture choices based solely on the intent, not because it was what the non-existent look up table in the camera proposed.

I don’t care if you use automation as a tool to achieve your vision but when automation becomes your vision, you cease to be a photographer and become a partially mobile copy machine. The outcomes are boring, tiresome and have been done so many times already and have less impact than a feather falling on steel. I rarely look at photographs anymore, because when I rarely see something that is innovative, a little research shows it is the only thing that the creator does. One good long exposure or three, following years of practice and copy machine reproduction gets old fast. This does not means that I think that long exposure as a technique does not have a purpose, it means that if it’s all that you do, congratulations on building a box around yourself to live in.

Fortunately for these self proclaimed artists, the vast base of the picture consumer has the intellectual diligence of a paramecium and is thrilled to show it’s approval and adoration with a thumbs up or a like, the no effort of the lazy. When media proclaimed luminaries say things like great artists steal, it is an advocation of no mind, no thought, merely another instance of the copy machine perfected by Xerox so many decades ago. Be influenced, certainly, there really is nothing new in image making and has not been for a very long time, but copying is the same as pushing the button on the copy machine, no thought, no emotion, no context, no lasting value.

I don’t think photography as an art form is dead. Yet. But it sure is working hard at achieving self-immolation. So here’s my challenge to you. If you cannot make an image with auto nothing, you need to work harder and put more of yourself into the image, or accept that snapshots are all you that will ever do. There is nothing wrong with choosing snapshots, but understand what they are, and what they are not. Not art, not creative, just a simple colour copy. No matter what you do in post processing or compositing or using the tool of the day, lipstick on a pig, is at its core, still just a pig with something smeared on it to fool the stupid.

Can you make an image without autofocus? Can you choose an aperture, shutter speed and ISO without using any kind of automatic settings, using only a light meter reading as a guide to a potential but possibly tedious image without your mental intervention? If the answer is no, and being creative is important to you, then you have work to do. Or you don’t. It’s your decision, but if you choose not to decide, you already have.

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