wdross wrote:
To a certain degree, you are right. But most of my observations were based off of the sights and what was being used to capture them. At the beer gardens, other than my camera, almost everthing was cellphones taking pictures. And, yes, there were selfies and group shots being taken in the beer gardens with cellphones. And my estimates of percentages could be off; they could easily be ~95% cellphones, ~3.5% P&S, and ~1.5% interchangable lense cameras. I would not estimate it going the other way.
To a certain degree, you are right. But most of my... (
show quote)
Tourists = whatever as camera as long as it shows something, anything. Bragging about somewhere is not new. The same was said over Instamatics vs 24x36 'eons' ago.
36 mm cameras were already seldom seen yet it was their golden age with film.
Your observations, while not wrong, simply reflects the generic attitude of folks toward documenting their activities. The cheaper the better. The attitude 'cheaper is better' has not taken hold within the photographer community and this is where you are mis-reading what you are seeing. Take a bus load of snap-shooter photographers in a tour and you will not see many cell phones if any. Walking next to a group of folks like that, armed to the teeth with their equipment, and you will say 'wow! DSLRs are not dead!'
Folks that have a particular interest to the point of investing time and money into their hobby, any hobby, are a minority, there is no way around that, regardless on how you try to depict it. Before we were seeing painters, now we do not or rarely, why? There is no painters anymore? The answer is no, they are still there, they simply take a picture and paint a home, in their studio, wherever. For them there is no point, They are mobbed by the same tourists you are mentioning and see their concentration or their pleasure of being alone with their paintbrushes taken away. Not only that, they get insane questions and cannot even see whatever they are trying to paint.
What is really changing is not the ratio camera/whatever but the number of folks going trooping in the places doing whatever they please w/o regard for anything or anyone. Photographer also get tired of having some ***** step in front of their carefully set tripod because they think if a photographer is there it is a good spot to stand THEN you have the inane questions. (not to mention the really insane that will push the tripod away...)
Photographers, unless hired, are loners in their craft. Snap-shooters congregate is moving school like fishes. Tourists are invading species. Guess who has what equipment. The last two 'breed' are pains in the rear-end for photographer, the first is responsible for the comments and inane questions and the second destroys any notion of tranquility unless you are onto crowd photography and the insanity that goes with it.
I remember a spot in the Alps, near Barcelonette that was hard to access so it was a pleasure to sit on the rocks and enjoy the view (Ubaye vallee). Now there is a road. A point of view has also been created. Folks stop with their cars or bus loads and take turns taking pictures from there. Most are likely to use cell phones. Before a few enterprising and hard core photographers were straining to bring large format view cameras before dawn to catch the light and the vallee still hidden in the fog clouds. We do not see these guys anymore, or more exactly, you have a hard time catching them at work. What took hours of drudging up the mountain now take minutes. They are there before the crowd and are gone when the crowd arrives.
You are observing the worst and make the wrong assumption from that. Yes, you are seeing what you are describing. No, it does not reflect on the secluded word of photographers.
PS. You create the type of threads before...
here and
here... Nothing wrong with that other than you seem to be a guy on a soap box screaming that end of the (photographer's) world is tomorrow.