Food is bland, Ron? Maybe your diet, but restaurants and super markets offer a vastly wider selection of meals and food products then ever. If you settle for bland then that's your problem. Houses incredibly cheap? I paid just about as much for a pick-up truck lately as I did for a custom built 2 story house on 3.5 acres back in '76. That same $45,000 today will barely buy a shack. Today's building materials and techniques are far beyond anything we had years ago. The 3-tab shingles I put on my original house were rated for 15 yr. Hardly anyone sells them anymore. The Architectural shingles on my current house are rated for 50 yrs. Engineered lumber, spray foam insulation, roof underlay, household wiring and electrical, plumbing, heating & a/c, lighting have all improved. Cars? If you want real junk go back to the '50's, 60's and 70's when the Detroit iron was just plain disgraceful. Even Harley-Davidson was often junk back in the 70's. Not anymore. Today's manufacturing technology has made modern vehicles just about bullet proof. 100,000 miles is barely broken in for most cars. In the '60's blueprinting an engine and degreeing the cam were necessities for high performance. Today, a guy in his garage can't come close to the precision that the factories deliver right off the assembly line.
You can always find crap if you look hard enough, but you can have your world of nostalgia. I'll take the precision and quality available in today's world.

This is not only about photography but everything else.

We yearn for good health when we are ill but just as quickly we forget what is was to be sick.

In photography our tolerance for low quality imagery increases with the mediocrity of the work presented. Something that would have merely be worth a glance now becomes 'good' and was was good becomes 'great'.

How did I notice this? I was asked to go through archives to purge them and before long I realized that I had built a 'tolerance' for 'not so good'. I had to go three times over this accumulation of captures before reducing if from 25k to about 8k and I am well aware that this 'built in' tolerance made me save too many 'passable' images.

That made me think of other things and I nrealized that we live in world where mediocrity is king. Our food is bland, our drinks are blah (after too many I guess it not does make a difference). Houses are incredibly cheap in construction and start to fall apart after a decade or so if not sooner, cars are more expensive than ever and with a few exceptions start to have severe problems past 100k miles...

It used to be that if you wanted quality you had to pay for it. Now you pay for it and the quality is not there. I saw that in photography too, for a long time. The decline was slow but now it is speeding up.

I am not asking 'What gives'? Simply because I know the answer. We have lost the sense of right and wrong. It has eroded slowly for decades, both on a personal and societal levels.

This is not only about photography but everything else.

We yearn for good health when we are ill but just as quickly we forget what is was to be sick.

In photography our tolerance for low quality imagery increases with the mediocrity of the work presented. Something that would have merely be worth a glance now becomes 'good' and was was good becomes 'great'.

How did I notice this? I was asked to go through archives to purge them and before long I realized that I had built a 'tolerance' for 'not so good'. I had to go three times over this accumulation of captures before reducing if from 25k to about 8k and I am well aware that this 'built in' tolerance made me save too many 'passable' images.

That made me think of other things and I nrealized that we live in world where mediocrity is king. Our food is bland, our drinks are blah (after too many I guess it not does make a difference). Houses are incredibly cheap in construction and start to fall apart after a decade or so if not sooner, cars are more expensive than ever and with a few exceptions start to have severe problems past 100k miles...

It used to be that if you wanted quality you had to pay for it. Now you pay for it and the quality is not there. I saw that in photography too, for a long time. The decline was slow but now it is speeding up.

I am not asking 'What gives'? Simply because I know the answer. We have lost the sense of right and wrong. It has eroded slowly for decades, both on a personal and societal levels.

Hmmm. Vehicles are now much more energy efficient and many last well over 200,000 miles, cameras can do things unimagined a few years ago, TVs and appliances are sharper and more capable than ever before (I remember transistors and bulbs failing), and so on. I do agree that construction is not what it used to be. I doubt we will see structures bring built now like the churches in Europe that last 400+ years. But would you be interested in living in the same conditions as were common 50 years ago? Little air conditioning, poor communication, lack of world knowledge, health practices without laparoscopy, etc?

I've been thinking a lot about this post, and the many responses to it. The original poster talks about losing a sense of right and wrong - I would like to add further reflection about what I think that means, and how it affects anything we humans create, whether it's photographs, music, cars, houses, etc. In general, society seems to be very self-absorbed. That means that there is something in the way of our ability to be aware, to focus with objectivity on whatever is beyond us, outside of us, around us. We don't see the subtleties of light and texture in real life, so we don't/can't put those qualitites into a photograph; we don't hear the louds, softs and tonal textures in music, so before you know it - low quality mp3s are "as good as"; processed, imitation and quick food seems to be as good as the dish that takes multiples steps and more time to create. Over time, everything becomes "jpegged", you all know what I mean. How can we remedy this? I think it comes down to an ability to truly experience life through all our senses, to truly see, hear, taste, touch and smell. Let go of our filters, learn to risk the unknown, find a new relationship with failure as a prelude to learning and success, learn to suspend premature judgment so that we can see how things "really are", open our hearts to others!

Forgive me if I got carried away, but I think each one of us can make a difference. There is still so much beauty in this world and our lives - let's live it fully!

Not saying you are right or wrong but what I think you are referring to is personal preference more than the slipping of quality at least in photography. Every day I look at the photos on UHH and see some incredibly good photographs; I mean really outstanding. But along with that I see some absolutely terrible and boring photographs, some of birds feeding at a feeder or a shot of the moon. There are many depending on what your preference in photo subjects is. But that is me. I don't go in for bird shots. There are many photographers who do love bird photos and put out lots of dollars every year to buy cameras, lenses, binoculars etc. just to take photos of birds. There are other people who might see a fox in their front yard occasionally. To actually get a photo of it with their 70-300 lens, where it even looks like a fox, is a tremendous achievement for them. They are happy campers.

My point is that every one of us has different expectations of the finished photograph. If you are happy with a somewhat out of focus picture of a blue jay at a feeder then your day is made. You are happy and nobody should take that away from you.

As for the other subjects you mentioned, mediocrity and what was wrong is now right and proper, I agree with you but they would take much more time than I have here.

Dennis

This is not only about photography but everything else.

We yearn for good health when we are ill but just as quickly we forget what is was to be sick.

In photography our tolerance for low quality imagery increases with the mediocrity of the work presented. Something that would have merely be worth a glance now becomes 'good' and was was good becomes 'great'.

How did I notice this? I was asked to go through archives to purge them and before long I realized that I had built a 'tolerance' for 'not so good'. I had to go three times over this accumulation of captures before reducing if from 25k to about 8k and I am well aware that this 'built in' tolerance made me save too many 'passable' images.

That made me think of other things and I nrealized that we live in world where mediocrity is king. Our food is bland, our drinks are blah (after too many I guess it not does make a difference). Houses are incredibly cheap in construction and start to fall apart after a decade or so if not sooner, cars are more expensive than ever and with a few exceptions start to have severe problems past 100k miles...

It used to be that if you wanted quality you had to pay for it. Now you pay for it and the quality is not there. I saw that in photography too, for a long time. The decline was slow but now it is speeding up.

I am not asking 'What gives'? Simply because I know the answer. We have lost the sense of right and wrong. It has eroded slowly for decades, both on a personal and societal levels.

Occasionally it is failure to proof read but more often, in my opinion it is that the person honestly does not know how to spell. I often see word errors with the following words:

advice-advise
to-too-two
their-there
Canon-Cannon
your-you're-you
then-than
ad-add

There are many more as I am sure other UHH members can add greatly to the list.
I no i kant spell. And my sintax and grammer r teribul. But mi keybored skils r evon wurse. Evon sew eye bette everwon kan unnerstand whot I juest rote.
Recently I tried to correct a fellow member on the usage of advise-advice. He got irate and literally hounded me for two days commenting on my terrible photography, own word usage etc. I guess he wanted to have people think he is illiterate.

Personally I am somewhat happy to have somebody point out an error I make. I am not perfect and would rather make the correction than have people think I am dumb. I do realize that people from other countries are not used to the English language and our spelling. I understand that perfectly.

Dennis