You can still go into a newsagents and see a collection of photographic magazines on the shelves. These are generally written by what might be called 'legitimate' journalists, i.e. those who have bothered to learn the craft of writing and are usually supervised by experienced editors who are looking for articles by people who firstly know what they are talking about and secondly can get their points across in an informative and entertaining way. However the photographic internet has no such constraints. Anyone can write a blog or use a video camera and post it on social media. And yes you might say I fall into that category. However before writing this blog I had contributed articles to both travel, music and photographic magazines (including reviewing gear) and have co-written 4 books for music students on playing the guitar. For me the written word is still something to be treasured and far more useful than the preening amateurism of self appointed reviewers and 'vloggers'. And I have several specific areas where I think we are especially let down by what we are offered.
Now I have no expectation that my views will ever have any influence whatsover. You only have to look at who gets the most hits on YouTube to see what constitutes a success. Indeed I have some younger relatives who claim to never watch mainstream television and only view the world through the internet. I feel incredibly sorry for them. The amateurism, prejudice and sheer stupidity of much of what appears on YouTube is prolific and only notable for its awfulness. If this is 'modern' and the 'future' then I despair. What are we heading for? For me the words of Andy Warhol have partly come true. In 1968 he wrote 'In the future everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes' Unfortunately some of the self publicising airheads who get millions of hits (and dollars) from their internet nonsense have been around for a lot longer and show no signs of disappearing!! So, going back to the title of this post, below are my specific criticisms of what is wrong with the photographic internet.
1) My primary problems with reviews, blogs, vlogs and forums is very little of their content is about the art of photography and the creative process of producing images. It's all about gear, gadgets, specs. and complex functions that serve little purpose other than to confuse and use up battery power. There is endless bickering about unimportant details, often turning into nastiness, a kind of brand loyalty and hyper fanboyism that makes football supporters look like angels and a constant desire to criticise those who don't 'tow the party line'. It's a constant tirade of poorly written and misspelled justification of the buyers own purchases and hatred of anyone that chooses differently. At first it may seem like fun but after a while the attraction quickly turns to bewilderment at how people who 'hide' behind their computer can be so unpleasant.
2) Huge amounts of said reviews, blogs, vlogs and forums are full of very poor quality content. It still amazes me that some well known internet 'stars' seem to have no understanding of how to focus a camera while shooting videos of their unaesthetic faces. The amount of focus hunting from cameras obviously set to auto everything seems to be increasing, not going away. And then these people have the nerve to 'review' video functionality on hybrid cameras. They generally seem to complain that the camera doesn't turn out movie quality footage without them doing anything. Movie and television professionals and many serious photographers (both professional AND amateur) always use manual focus anyway as there is still no AF system that focuses on what I want. The idea of letting a camera (or more accurately the engineers who designed it) decide on what I want to focus on is ridiculous. It is amateurism of the worst kind (more accurately described a 'I can't be bothered') that leads to discussion of how many focus points a camera has. This attitude permeates through a lot of photographic internet video content. It's obvious that the primary purpose of posting this stuff is get themselves out there and make some money. And of course there is no attempt to come up with something that's professional, creative or even interesting. The standard has already been set. Point a camera at your face, talk b******s into it, don't bother about retakes and we end up with a piece of footage that's annoying and / or irrelevant. I've yet to see anything that comes anywhere near to insightful or genuinely useful and yes that includes the Canadian Dumb and Dumber duo currently working for Dpreview.
3) Have you noticed how patronising all this stuff has become? I saw a video on Dpreview about how to set up a Sony Cameras AF. My take on this is that if you need a video to explain it, what's the point of it. AF is supposed to be a help not a hindrance. I started photography when there was no AF on cameras anyway. So I learnt to manually focus. The vast majority of my photographs and videos don't use AF anyway. Plus of course, believe it or not we actually have the intelligence to work these things out for ourselves. If not there is always the manual. Hey we can read too! But this is no isolated example. So much of photographic internet content these days is telling us what to do and even more worrying, what to think. Now what gives these people the right to do that is difficult to explain. First off, with a few exceptions, the standard of what is produced is pretty mediocre. For example I'm always astonished at just how bad Dpreviews sample images are. What made them think that they have the necessary creative credentials to demonstrate what a camera can do? Most of the other photographic 'gurus' have obviously never attempted to make a living as a photographer and if they did, have proved themselves not up to the challenge and have chosen instead to foist their uninspiring and complacent drivel on us instead. What really annoys me are the Northrup 'bots' with that white board. This pretence that they are some kind of pseudo lecturers is insulting, though it has to be said the white haired one is a great cure for insomnia. This latter trait is shared by Greybeard and the elephant, or whatever his name is, with such a slow, ponderous and pretend intellectual delivery whose pretensions are only exceeded by the paucity of any genuine insights in his delivery. Now I used to watch Kaiman Wong and Gordon Laing, but both have now been affected by 'AF hunting syndrome' these days, whereby their video head shots flicker in and out of focus in a most disconcerting way.
4) By us watching and reading their output these so called journalists make money off us. This is one of the reasons I only click on their output now and again, in the (dashed of course) hope that they might have improved. And this makes their work dishonest and makes this watcher and reader feel like I'm participating in a mugging. Now I don't object to people making a living and I used to have a fair amount of advertising on this blog, but it always felt like begging to me and I could never bring myself to make those 'Don't forget to subscribe' pleas. Because if you are trying to 'monetise' (surely one of the most unpleasant words in the English language !) your opinions then surely you must have a wealth of experience and knowledge in order to do that. Again and again these 'reviewers'/ bloggers / 'vloggers' etc. demonstrate that that they don't have that or even the ability to get things right. For example I once saw a video in which Lok from Digital Rev boldly stated that the Olympus Pen was the first m4/3 camera. It wasn't, it was the Panasonic G1. Now if these people can't get this stuff right, why on earth should we believe anything else they say?
5) 'Opinions are like a*******s, everybody's got one' Sometimes the arrogance of these self appointed pundits is breathtaking. They attempt to turn their personal impressions of a piece of gear into some kind of objective truth. After all, what they are attempting to sell us is the idea that that their opinion is more important than anybody else's. Now this has no basis in reality whatsoever. Unfortunately the rise of 'Gonzo Journalism' means that anyone thinks that they have the right to inflict those opinions on us and make their product about them and not what they are 'reviewing'. The internet is of course the perfect place for this. When people post stuff with no editorial constraints, then any idea of that being objective truth goes out the window. And far from any idea of presenting a well researched, fact checked article, it seems that all that has to happen is to produce some kind of stream of consciousness babbling and hope that somebody reads / watches it and of course most important of all, subscribe or buy something through their site.
6) Why can't the notion that putting together balanced, factual and informative articles and videos and popularity go together? Luminous Landscape had a go at that and used a lot of guest writers, many of them professionals. But some of the latest product I've seen from them has been disappointing. There are some sites that attempt proper comparative testing and that can be useful, but I've always felt that a collection of sample raw files shot under a variety of conditions is the most useful. And yes Dpreview do that, but as indicated before, the aesthetic quality of what they offer leaves much to be desired. Gordon Laing at Camera Labs also does a good job and I wish he would stick to that without feeling the need to 'vlog.' All of this is in the light of the slow death of the local camera shop. Photographic retail is now so dominated by box shifters that it has become very difficult to go and try out a camera. Yes the internet can gives us some samples to assess image quality, but handling a camera and seeing how it's laid out is just as important and depending on where you live that's become almost impossible in some areas.
7) Camera manufacturers seem obsessed with using internet 'influencers', supplying them with pre-production cameras and inviting them to junkets where they can scoff vol au vents and slosh cheap wine down their throats, before going off to photograph a few models. Exactly what this achieves is beyond me. Often they put an embargo on allowing proper samples to be posted and they then have to suffer overwhelmingly negative review with the perpetrators attempting to justify their existence. Chris 'I've never passed a mirror I didn't like' Nichols of Dpreview did a hatchet job on the Canon EOS R (one of many) in terms of it's ergonomics. Now I actually bought the camera and think it's very well laid out, but then that's personal choice and that's how it should be treated. Some reviewers have said that the EOS R has poor battery life and some of said the reverse. Now who do you believe? Do we read all the reviews and come up with an average?
8) It's so middle aged male dominated. You sometimes get the impression that the only people interested in photography are of a certain generation. In the West these are overwhelmingly male, white, middle class and middle aged (and older) Its not exclusively like that but baby boomers seem to have more of a presence than any other group. All of this makes photography seem like an old mans hobby which, hopefully, it's not. Interestingly I've looked at some review videos made by UK camera dealers and they seem to feature younger photographers. They are generally better made as well, though there are never any negative comments. They are selling camera gear after all.
Too sum up, my criticisms of much of internet photographic journalism are-
- The quality is worse than it should be
- It's way too subjective
- Too many practitioners are simply not up the job
- There's a lot of dishonesty involved
- It's all about the money
- A lot of the conclusions are simply wrong
- Many of the opinions and conclusions are uncannily similar
- Quality of images leave much to be desired
- Focus is on the writer / 'vlogger' rather than the gear
- 'If it's got more knobs it's better' philosophy
- Very little diversity in terms of the practitioners
- Full of cliches and repetition of 'perceived opinion' i.e. a 'herd mentality'
- Arrogant and inaccurate
- Often poorly written
- Lowest common denominator emphasis
- That poor writing and self centred approach actually puts a lot of people off
I mention the fact that Ken buys his cameras and for me that's important. I don't trust anybody who has a pre-production camera sent to them for a couple of weeks to write / video a review. These people are basically 'camera groupies.' They get invited to these launch parties or get some gear in the post and they are supposed to do their turn and publicise it. They obviously think it's a big deal to get this gear before anybody and use it. The so called 'influencers'. But getting a travel company ringing you up to contribute the photos for a book or making the front cover of an upmarket magazine, now for a genuine photographer, that's a big deal. I had gear sent to me for review and I certainly didn't think it was anything other than a chore. But this idea that somehow you're important if you deal with the suits at a camera company is what I guess these 'camera groupies' feed off. But then if that's what floats their boat, then I feel sorry for them. Personally I have other aspirations.
As ever, all of this is my personal opinion and I'm well aware that many would not agree with me. And I'm well aware that my writing this will change nothing. However, it may or may not be a coincidence that as the visibility of these amateurish, mostly talentless, so called journalists has risen, the sales of stand alone cameras have fallen significantly. Hopefully if sales fall even more many of these pests will disappear, simply because they are not making enough money. Also there is just too much gear out there chasing too little money and companies may have to scale back on what they release. My theory is that stand alone camera buying may well go back to film camera levels. If it does at least we may be left with those who are genuinely interested in photography and those who do it for the money and transitory fame will pack up and do something else. I can but hope!!
