On Sep 25, 2011, at 11:48 AM, Steven Desjardins wrote: > I'm not sure about this. When i was young, there weren't that many > folks shooting period because film and processing cost money. Now > with cell phones and the internet there are an enormous number of > images being taken. I'll bet there are at least as many, and I think > more, young folks taking photography seriously, but they get lost in > the facebook noise. Of course, the whole lomography thing really > confuses what we think of as serious photography.
I can think of a couple of ways to define serious photography. The first one would be someone that not only takes photographs, but who puts time and effort into improving their craft, so that they get better at taking the photographs that they intend to. I suspect that most people on this list define serious photography as someone who takes photographs that they happen to like. So for one person Adams did serious photography and HCB didn't, and another it's the other way around. Frankly, I think too many people have a big stick up their ass about what photos other people take and what they use to take them. I don't care whether Pentax makes some camera that I have no need for, or interest in, I care whether they stay in business and make the gear that I want to buy. If they take risks in designing and marketing new systems, it might hurt their bottom line, but if they don't take risks, there will be nothing to differentiate them and no reason for people to buy their cameras rather than those of the big name brands. And, while you may not think that point and shoots matter, I was recently talking to a high schooler who was interested in learning more about photography and he told me that he wanted Canon gear because when he used Canon point and shoots, they were easier for him to use than Nikon point and shoots. So, not only do people make choices on the entry level line based on the flagships, they make choices on the luxury line based on the economy models. I suspect that brand loyalty, or at least habit, goes deeper than any of us suspect, and a transition path from point and shoot all of the way up to 645D is important. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
