alexol

And another point, after a lifetime in business mostly from the providing side rather than the consuming side, there is a golden rule to be followed if you want to increase membership: Focus - hah! - on the customer and the customers needs and wants.

Start with the gratification of producing a great final image, THEN help people get there.

Accept that most people will start out with a phone and interest may or may not bloom.

Here, we always want to start talking about f-stops and ISO and focal length. Boring. Necessary, eventually, but boring.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Many younger people aren't interested in the minute details which many here are obsessed.

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Perhaps a few, but most will be attracted to TikTok, Facebook, Twitter...or whatever comes over horizon.

They are not into gear, for the obvious reasons, and luddites stuck in old methods and media. The world has moved on...its the way it has always been. Get accustomed to it, if you can.

My next birthday is just around the corner, I'll be 77. I like the smartphone forum more and more these days. Its just a matter of time and my only camera will be a phone camera. Yes they have shortcomings but each new iteration gets better.

I'm on Facebook and although most of the posts are just nonsense it is entertaining and a convenient way to communicate with like minded people.

whatdat Loc: Del Valle, Tx.

👍👍👍

whatdat Loc: Del Valle, Tx.

79,turning 80 at end of month. Good gosh; how did that happen???

47greyfox Loc: on the edge of the Colorado front range

I’ll be 77 less than a month from now. Yeah, I’m a lifelong victim of combining Christmas and birthday gifts, but I’ve digressed. I’m also a member of some of the same Facebook groups. None have a lot of posts IMHO, I’m still encouraged by the range of topics, which show a genuine interest and curiosity in the hobby that come from younger users (I think). As for UHH, as long as I’ve been visiting it has been a unique place for us older users come to play, learn, and occasionally share our opinions.

Picture Taker Loc: Michigan Thumb

We can learn if we want. Some of us slower than other. Looking for help may be part of it. Find a club ask some one you see holding a camera. Look on line.
AS US ON THIS BLOG!

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

I too am a Ham operator. Our club is thriving and has many young members.

terryMc Loc: Arizona's White Mountains

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Young people process information very differently from us Boomers. That's not necessarily better or worse. Better or worse depends upon the circumstance. When they find something they can do, want to do, and do well, AND that society values, they succeed with flying colors.

Photography isn't necessarily valued the way it was before the digital age came to be. As I said earlier, in a different way, photography is seldom practiced in isolation from other media now. It is "in the mix," but it is not THE mix.

I'm very glad to see that, as I've been a writer/photographer/narrator/editor/mixed media producer of sorts all my life. In the 1980s, I used all those skills to produce corporate multi-image slide shows, videos, training cassettes, manuals... And in eight other roles after that, I used those same skills when they made sense to support my work.

The convergence of virtually all media into the computer, the tablet, and the smartphone, plus the interconnectivity of all screens and keyboards, means those who have grown up in the 21st Century use them all, by assumption. Media — for better AND worse — have become the landscape of many people's daily environment.

This became very clear to me when I lived through the development of it at a photo lab that was in a complete state of analog to digital transition from 1994 to 2011.

I recently saw an award-winning short video based on the work of teenage musicians. In illustrating the title track of their first album, the video makes us think about all the media convergence, and about how that has been used to manipulate us in not-so-obvious ways. https://vimeo.com/210374020

Those teens are now successful rock stars, touring the world. They have used every digital tool in the arsenal to build and stay connected to a huge fan base through social media. Still photography and video are important pieces of it.

Many of us grew up with photography as an isolated hobby. The end product was a print on the wall or in an album, or a projected slide. Very few images are good enough to stand alone. Most require some context or narrative to give them meaning. That is what the smartphone, tablet, and computer allow us to do so well. The implication of the fact that we can hit send and broadcast our thoughts and images instantly, everywhere, is still being processed.

alexol

Mr Mike W

I am 77 and thankful for our dslr and mirrorless cameras. There is some hope in that my daughter just accepted my old Nikon D-300. Once she gets used to back button focus, I’m sure she will use it.

Carl S

I have a fourteen year old granddaughter who has become very interested in photography, and she has been the beneficiary of some of my older equipment, essentially a Nikon D-7100 along with assorted lenses. I would think if there were a special section for cell phone photography, it might attract some of the younger crowd as well as some of us oldsters. I'm a young eighty-two year old,but what do I know?

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

So...did you explain to her that there is an alternative to BBF? Did you offer to restore the camera to the factory standard mode of operation? My wife would throw a BBF camera into the trash. No telling what my niece would do with it before she threw it into the trash. Neither of them photographs anything which makes BBF required or beneficial.