It's a Snap: The Future of Photography

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Archives
It’s a Snap: The Future

John D. Lund, 2011

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Archives

Post-Photography

“ … now we must see it for what it has always been, t he image
wit hin t he flows and ex changes t hat give t he images access,
meaning, and cont ex t .”
A ric M ayer, O n Post -Phot ography, June 2 8 , 2 0 1 0

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Archives Post-Photography

Democratization - Death of the Original

From Here On exhibit manifesto begins, “Now, we‟re a series of
editors. We all recycle, clip and cut, remix and upload. We can
make images do anything. All we need is an eye, a brain, a camera,
a phone, a laptop, a scanner, a point of view.”

 Corinne Vionnet, featured in From Here On, finds
photos of tourist cities and sites on photo-sharing
sites on the web, and layers one on top of the other
resulting in an impressionistic photo-painting;
 Each image contains about a hundred images taken
from photo-hosting websites.

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Corinne Vionnet, http://www.corinnevionnet.com/site/1-photo-opportunities.html

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Photo-layering, Mash-ups

Who is the photographer/the artist?

What is an original? Does the original
have value anymore?

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Joan Fontcuberta on future of photography

 Fontcuberta prioritizes not the methods of
communication but the accessibility of images to
everyone,
 “We are therefore passing through an age of
access….”

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Joan Fontcuberta on future of photography

 Fontcuberta outlines 10 points on the future of
photography, here are 4 of those points:
 ON THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST: no longer a case of producing
works, but of prescribing meanings;

 ON THE FUNCTION OF IMAGES: the circulation and management
of the image will prevail over the content of the image;

 ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART: discourses of originality will be
delegitimized and appropriationist practices will be normalized;

 ON THE EXPERIENCE OF ART: creative practices which
accustom us to dispossession will be privileged: it is better to share
than to own.

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Greater control in hands of the Creator
 In the past the public mind focused on the individual
photographer risking life for the iconic war
photograph yet behind that photograph were
publishers, news rooms, and fiscal realities:
 “Which meant that the canon that we understand to be the
history of photography was largely shaped by these
structural and economic forces, and continue to be shaped
by them today.” (Aric mayer, On Post-Photography June 28, 2010)

 However, technological advances have brought much more
of the entire sphere under the control of the creators, now a
film can be made with a camera and a laptop.

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Questions for the Archivist
Will greater control in hands of a
creator benefit archives?
Will archivist see more
voices/perspectives preserved?
The role of the archives is to ensure
authenticity, but how will an authentic
record be defined amid the plethora of
images and photo sharing, democratized
distribution?

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Information Overload
 “Right. I talked to Joao Silva in Baghdad and I said,
“Do you think there are any great images to come out
of Iraq, the way there were in Vietnam.” And he said,
“The problem isn‟t that we haven‟t taken that classic
image. The problem is that we have taken too many.”
- Michael Kamber in conversation with Tim Hetherington, creator
of Restrepo

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Post-photography in the Archives
 Will what archives are able to, or determine to, save
become the iconic image for future generations?
 Archivist may provide a voice of authority in the
midst of the din.
 At what point will the image be fixed?
 Must the archivist move away from the role of
custodian to one of a manager?

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Archives

Photography is Social

“When you leave everything to the crowd, where everything is
democratized, when everything is determined by the number of clicks,
you are by definition undermining the seriousness of the artistic
endeavour,” he says, “There is no evidence that we are on the verge of
a great new glittering cultural age, there is evidence that we may well
be on the verge of a new dark age in cultural terms… where the
creative world is destroyed and where all we have is cacophony and
self opinion, where we have a crisis of democratised culture.”
- Andrew Keen speaking in film, PressPausePlay

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Archives Photography is Social

Social is driving the Tech
To date digital cameras have emulated
traditional film photography rather than
transform:
 On Oct 19, 2011 the Lytro camera was introduced to
the world;
 Potentially a game changer;
 It is a light field camera;
 One to one relationship between pixels & micro lenses;
 Focus after the fact, 3D potential;
 No need for aperture or shutter speed;
 Instant photo button – no time delay.

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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDyRSYGcFVM

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 The target market for the Lytro is not the enthusiast
or professional photographer, rather the social media
market, photo sharing:
 Photographs are instant and can be uploaded to Facebook
or an iPhone;
 Photographs are interactive, focus and key subjects may be
manipulated;
 Images are relatively low resolution.

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 As Andy Crowe points out in a discussion forum on
Digital Photography Review:
 The simple design of the camera, lack of controls and instant on, all point
to letting people take photos instantly so they don' t miss an important
moment.

 This camera allows someone to quickly pull it out of a bag, take a shot
without waiting for focus or worrying about what part of the image to
focus on and then upload it to Facebook without doing any processing.
Once uploaded they and all their friends can play director by pulling
focus on different parts of the image in real time.

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It’s All About the Apps
There are a plethora of photo applications
designed for the iPhone and Android OS, a
few examples:
Instagram (instagr.am) - a Hit Parade star;
Color (www.color.com) – a cautionary tale;
Waddle & ZangZing – some privacy please;
Photovine – so promising, yet DOA.

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Instagram

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 Instagram is probably the most successful photo app
to date, it is available for the iPhone and Android
users wait in anticipation:
 Kevin Systrom, one of the creators of Instagram, argues that
unlike 90% of apps that are solution-based, they set out to
solve a problem;
 The three key problems that Instagram sought to solve were:
- Beauty – aesthetically pleasing and simple design;
- Speed – designed for the iPhone, 612 x 612 resolution,
upload time masked by starting immediately, before any
tagging activity starts;
- Distribution – seamless social integration with sites like
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, FourSquare and Tumblr;

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Lots of excitement around Color back in
March, 2011 when it was known that investor,
Bill Nguyen, had invested $41 million;
 With Color there is no need for accounts, friending, following,
uploading or sharing; you simply take the picture;
 Take a photo using the app and it is instantly available to
anyone to view within 150 feet of your location;
 Elastic Network – prioritizes by strength of connection to
contacts;
 Only see stream of photos from those within 150 feet of you
or a 150 feet of your friends/contacts. Without a built
network of friends one is either looking at nothing or a
stream of photos from strangers.

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 Color required a statistically significant percentage of
people to participate and there were considerable
privacy concerns:
 By September of 2011 Color made a last ditch effort of
relevance by switching gears to become a Facebook
photo/video app;
 Without the real time interface there is little to distinguish
Color from other Facebook photo browsers.

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 With all the socializing going on, it is not surprising
that some folks are calling for a little privacy. Waddle
and ZangZing are two apps responding to this
market:
 ZangZing launched April 2011, Waddle launched October 2011;

 Waddle emphasizes privacy concerns, “A waddle is a mobile photo journal
where groups capture experiences together. Private, instant, conversational,
memorable and super fun.” – waddleapp.com;

 ZangZing emphasises its group photo sharing features, for which, privacy is
a featured component. See video at www.zangzing.com;

 Waddle co-founder, Parker Emmott, indicated that while the number of
photos being taken has exploded, “… that most sharing was still done
through either direct text messaging or emailing photos to a group.” Not
photo sharing apps.

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 Waddle:

“It doesn‟t force you to log in with your Facebook account. It
doesn‟t pull in the photos you‟ve shared on Instagram. It
doesn‟t encourage you to share your photos publicly at all.
In fact, its goal is to allow you to privately share and
comment on your photos with other individuals, or small
groups of friends and family. That‟s it.” – Colleen Taylor

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July, 2013 Google unveils Photovine a new
photo-sharing social network (by invitation)
Aug 26, 2011 – “Google Kills Photovine”:
Photovine had debut only a week earlier for the
general public;
One Twitter member, Gayle Schneider,
commented, “Why are they shutting down
Photovine? It just became popular?”;

Speaking of twitter, pic.twitter.com, soft
launch July 2011, available to all Aug 2011.

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Archives in the future will likely need to
expect to receive low resolution quality
digital photos well below the ideal.
Do we need to re-evaluate what
constitutes archival quality?
When it comes to apps, do archives need
to preserve the content, the software
and/or the social environment?

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My iPhone 4 is killing my Digital Cameras
- Guerson Meyer, Feb 20, 2011

 100% Mobile: “my iPhone 4 phone is always with me…”;
 Geolocation: An iPhone always has access to it‟s GPS;
 100% Instant: Instant now means that directly after a
photo is taken it can be disseminated to the world
immediately:
 Done directly from iPhone;
 Videos edited, shared or uploaded to YouTube;

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 Social: iPhone photos can be instantly shared with friends
or the entire world. Half the fun is discovering new and
cool pics from friends and strangers alike via the web;
 Software: “The iPhone 4 is not a telephone, not a camera
but a powerful super-mini-computer…”

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 How will archivist respond to this paradigm shift –
instant photography as the primary way of visualizing
the world?

 Lee Morris – fstoppers – fashion shoot with an iphone _

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Everything Old is New Again
Lomography: www.lomography.com
Diana f+
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielygo/2576920796/

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Lomography, 10 Golden Rules:
 1. Take your camera everywhere you go;
 2. Us it any time – day and night;
e
 3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but part of it;
 4. Try the shot from the hip;
 5. Approach the objects of your Lomographic desire as close
as possible;
 6. Don't think (William Firebrace);
 7. Be fast;
 8. You don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film;
 9. Afterwards either;
 10. Don't worry about any rules .

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Polaroid:
 http:/ / www.wiissa.com/ #1881553/ mongolia;

 Fuji:
http:/ / www.fujifilm.ca/ products/ instax/ index.html;

 The impossible project: http:/ / www.the-impossible-
project.com/ about/ #team.

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As Archives adapt to new digital formats
they cannot forget the analogue formats.

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Where do I go to share?
 Many, many, photo sharing websites to choose from:
 A quick google will find a variety of overlapping top ten lists;

 What to look for? What is your goal?

 Is your intention to share photos among friends and family?

 Do you wish to share your photos with fellow enthusiasts?

 Is the goal simply to reach as many people as possible?
 Are you looking to expand your business by having a web
presence? (Sell photos, mugs, t-shirts, books, etc)?

 How flexible is the interface? Are you stuck with the same
look and feel as everyone else? Ads?

 Cost?

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 A good all round source for digital photography is
DPReview (Digital Photography Review)
www.dpreview.com/:
 In my search, three common denominators in the discussion
groups were:
- SmugMug, PBase and Zenfolio;
- They are certainly not the only suggestions but they have
a number of supporters;

 Flickr by far is the most popular;

 Please see hand out for a more detailed list.

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 Do archivist need to consider the context in which
digital images are shared - the software, the apps,
the web platforms? The social environment?

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Archives

Future Tech

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Archives Digitization

Future Tech
The Future of Photography
– a little future storytelling
 “Though Photos will still be composed by people with cameras,
it will gradually become more accurate to say pictures were
computed rather than „taken‟ or „captured.‟”
- Neal Mathews

Wireless V iewfinder Interchangeable Lens

Consumer Electronics Show 2011

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Archives

Photo O rganization

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Archives Photo Organization

Organization 101
Services, such as, Gmail and Yahoo have led
us to become accustomed to our data piling
up endlessly;
Software like Picassa will find an image file
anywhere on a hard drive, there is no need to
know where it is;
But Picassa only cares that it is an image file, all
are equal;
There is no discernment of importance or priority;
Software may be corrupted, in what folder were
those photographs stored?

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Organization 101
It is important to:
 Know where your photos are stored;
 Identify your photos;
 Back up, back up, back up;
 Regularly migrate data
- Keep up with changing technologies.

 “In the digital age, when we have opportunity to store hundreds
of thousands of images on one laptop or hard drive, things can
get pretty complicated to go back and try to find “that one picture
of Aunt Helen at Johnny‟s 6th birthday party.” Especially if you
don‟t have an established workflow and file handling system.”
- Christina N. Dickson

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Organization 101
Programs, such as, Picasa by google,
Aperture by Apple and Lightroom by Adobe
may provide great help in photo organization
but they are not solutions.

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Organization 101
Guiding Principles:
 Upload your images using a unique file name system
- Each image is distinct from any other;
- Don‟t rely on the numerical file name generated by your camera;
- Create a file name system that has meaning to you
- Example, Date, initials, image #: [20111031_JDL_0001.jpg];

 Upload your images into dated folders [20111031]
- If you have more than one event or subject taken on the same
day sub-folders may be created under the name of each event or
subject.
- One option may be to identify sub-folders in accordance to event
and location;

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Organization 101
Guiding Principles cont‟d:
 Convert photos to a non-proprietary format:
- i.e., RAW to Tiff or jpeg (keep at least one copy in original
format);

 Once images uploaded, go through and rate each image:
- Programs, such as, Lightroom have rating options;
- A “0 to 5” scale can be used: 0-1 get trashed, 2 get stored for
major editing later, 3-5 minor editing required & are ready to
show;

 Keyword (Tag) your images:
- By name, event, action, emotion, etc;

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Organization 101
Guiding Principles cont‟d:
 Back up, back up, back up:
- Keys to good back up:
- Automatic – whether you do it manually or have an
automated system back ups need to be second nature;
- Local – first backup is easy and fast to restore, such as, an
external hard drive;
- Remote – in case of disaster, may store at work, at a
relatives or in the cloud (should be secure – encrypted);

 Media Migration – will be necessary at least every 5-10
years:
- Technology changes;
- Technology fails.

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Organization 101
Metadata is data about data.
There are two kinds of metadata:
 Descriptive (Technical) metadata describes
technical features, such as, the shutter speed at
which a photograph was shot;

Additive metadata is metadata that can be added
to an image file, such as, keywords (tags) and
copyright information.

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Descriptive Metadata
 EXIF – Exchangeable Image File Format,
http://www.exif.org/

 IPTC – International Press Telecommunication Council,
IPTC Photo Metadata Standards

 IPTC: http://www.iptc.org/cms/site/index.html

Additive Metadata
 Adobe Bridge (bridge btwn creative suite software);

 Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture (workflow).

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Example of metadata on Flickr:
www.flickr.com

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Archives

Cloud Storage

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Archives Cloud Storage

What is the cloud?
Simply put it is offsite storage in the
hands of experts;
How often do you see one cloud?
Usually there are many;
Why store photos in a cloud?
How do you decide what vendor (cloud)
to use?

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What is the cloud?
1. You get what you pay for:
There are a variety of services that provide free or
cheap (under $10/month) back-up services;
They include a variety of features including
automated back-up;
Examples are, Mozy, CrashPlan, BackBlaze and
Carbonite;
However, if you are a business using a cheap
home service this is likely a breach of Terms of
Use and your account can be closed at any time.

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1. cont‟d
Services, such as, Mozy provide cheap service on
the speculation that their servers will be able to
support the demand as the low end users will
balance out with the high end users;
It is a gamble, in Mozy‟s case it didn‟t pan out and
they removed their $5 unlimited service.

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Terms of Service Translations by Jeremy Nicholl

 We are magicians and have developed a spell that enables us
to store all the world‟s data in our invisibility cloak. Also – just
like Mozy – we calculate that everything will just sort of average
out. Anyway, we‟ve also conjured up some Terms of Service,
so when it all goes wrong we‟re covered, even if you‟re not.

 Call yourself a professional photographer. Then those images
you uploaded are part of your business. We‟ve therefore
terminated your account and deleted your archive; you are of
course welcome to open a business account and pay for use
rather than piggybacking on our consumer offering, you cheap
bastard.

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2. What do you want to store?
Most online storage vendors were established to
support storing textual records, spreadsheets, etc
that have significantly smaller file sizes than
photographs;

These vendors have offered their services to
photographers as they have recognized a
demand;

However, they may only be suitable to low
resolution images, jpegs, point and shoot
photography or backing up the best of the best of
your photographs.

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3. They are not a storage solution they
are a back-up solution:
Remember the back-up mantra, you want both
local back-up and remote back-up;

Do not rely on remote back-up alone.

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4. There are multiple types of cloud
storage:
Public/community web-based cloud storage:
- Upload files via browser and files become instantly
available through a web-based interface. Examples
are Flickr and Smugmug;

- Downside, cannot upload RAW files and cannot
easily download all photos back to your computer.

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4. Cloud storage types cont‟d:
Local/hybrid folder synchronization:
- A client is installed that monitors a specific folder on
your computer for changes. A new file is
automatically uploaded to the cloud through your
internet connection;

- Advantage – auto updates folder structure and old
versions of files maintained;

- Easily share files between computers,
family/friends;

- Examples, Dropbox, Livedrive and Live Mesh.

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4. Cloud storage types cont‟d:
Dedicated/private cloud storage:
- Buy as much space as you need and use however you
need;
- May manually upload files or install client software that
auto synchronizes specific folders on computer;
- Up to you if you wish to keep a local back-up or not;
- Space is yours, not shared with others like in Flickr;
- Many different companies, such as, Amazon;
- May require some technical skills to use efficiently;
- Depending on amount of storage required, may become
very expensive;
- Example of photographer friendly site, Mosaic Archive.

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5. Bandwidth:
If you plan to back-up large image files, such as,
RAW and TIFF or a large back catalogue, you will
require good upload bandwidth;

You will also want good download bandwidth, as
well, for restoring files in case of an emergency;

Check with your internet provider.

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Mosaic, designed for photographers, key
features:
Avoids the incredibly long upload time required to
export 100s of gigabytes of image files to the
cloud by shipping an external hard drive that you
ship back with your image files:
- Yes, it is faster to snail mail your photos;

Validation – will automatically compare the files
they were sent and make sure they are byte for
byte the same files that are on your hard drive;
Provides a plug-in for Adobe Lightroom for
integration into your workflow, back-up, retrieval
seamless.

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Key features of Mosaic:
It comes at a cost:
- One time data upload fee of $0.40 per GB
(includes two way shipment of the external hard
drive used to send your images;
- Rate fee decreases as more photo are stored;
- Mosaic pricing example: If a photographer
sends 1 TB (1,000 GB) of photos to Mosaic, the
charge would be a data upload fee of $400.
After the one time fee, a storage fee of $25 per
month applies.

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Archives Digitization

Archivist goes, “Hmmm?”

Who shall care for the cloud over the
long term?
What are the implications of
international jurisdictions?
Have you considered your digital will?
Spark Episode 35

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Archives Questions?

Corinne Vionnet, http://www.corinnevionnet.com/site/1-photo-opportunities.html

It's a Snap: The Future of Photography

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