The Evolution of Photography: Pushing Beyond Technical Limitations

As we continue to navigate the world of photography, it's clear that technology has made tremendous strides in recent years. With new cameras being announced and released at an unprecedented rate, it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the latest advancements. But amidst all the excitement and innovation, there's a nagging question: where are we pushing beyond the technical limitations? How are photographers taking advantage of these incredible tools to push the boundaries of what's possible?

To answer this question, let's consider the number of cameras that have been announced or released in the last six months alone. It's staggering to think about how many cameras will be introduced over the next 11 months, and it's clear that technology is at an all-time high. I recently had the privilege of attending a Sony event, where I got to use the beta firmware for the a9 camera, set to be released this summer. The autofocus capabilities on that camera are truly unbelievable – it's like nothing we've ever seen before.

But as exciting as these new cameras are, the real question is: do they meet our needs? For many photographers, the answer will depend on their specific goals and ambitions. Will you need all of these features and capabilities to take your photography to the next level? The truth is that not everyone will need or want every single one of these advancements.

As someone who's passionate about the history of photography, I often find myself pondering where we are in the greater scheme of things. What does our creative side bring to the table when it comes to pushing beyond technical limitations? It's a question that I believe is worth exploring further. By examining how photographers have innovated and pushed boundaries throughout history, we can gain valuable insights into what's possible today.

One interesting example comes from the world of music. Consider an instrument like the banjo – often associated with bluegrass or country music, it has limitations defined by its name and traditional use cases. However, a musician named Bailiff Lek came along in the late 80s and early 90s, shattering expectations by playing rock, jazz, and classical music on the banjo. His innovation paid homage to those who came before him while also taking it in entirely new directions.

Similarly, I believe we're at a crossroads in photography, where we have the tools and capabilities to do something truly remarkable. But what are we doing with them? Are we pushing beyond the technical limitations, or simply playing it safe? The answer depends on our individual goals and ambitions as photographers.

The democratization of photography through social media has opened up new possibilities for creatives, but I believe that's not enough. We need to ask ourselves: what kind of photography do we want to make? What kind of impact do we want to have with our work? By embracing innovation and creativity, rather than simply accepting the status quo, we can push beyond the technical limitations and achieve something truly remarkable.

As this conversation continues, I invite you to share your thoughts and insights. How are you pushing beyond the technical limitations of photography today? What kind of creative side do you bring to your work? Let's explore these questions together and see where they take us.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin this video I want to open up a philosophical conversation with you guys this is something we haven't done in awhile but it's something that's been on my mind for I guess the last six months and namely I want to talk about the technical side of photography versus the creative side of photography and where is that balance where does that line drawn and I think this is something that's fairly interesting because in the last six months we have seen this marketing blitzkrieg from Japanese camera manufacturers new models more autofocus features more megapixels just all these incredible tools that we've never had before and at what point is this a marketing thing versus what we actually need and I think this is where we can open up some interesting conversation with this because I don't think there's a right or wrong answer but I think it's something worth exploring and I've got a couple image examples that I want to share with you and I'm gonna start with this one I suppose this is very appropriate to begin with because this is what is known to be the first photograph this is a photo of a rooftop it is an 8-hour long exposure that was made by Joseph Nessa for knee ups in about 1826 or 1827 now it may be miss named there is evidence that there were earlier photographs than this but this is the oldest surviving example so therefore is what we refer to as the first photograph is the longest fixed image if you will and I guess you know one way you could interpret this and I've actually heard people do it is you could go all curatorial on this and you can say well the the amazing thing of this photo with the eight-hour exposure represents an interpretation of the tranquility and the peaceful lifestyle of 19th century parasite you know but that would be complete BS this image is a technical icon only it represents not nothing it's not important it represents the beginning of photography and the lineage up to where we are now and I think as a photographer it's an image that I am fascinated with because of that but there's really not an emotional or creative interpretation to this other than the fact that it is an image that was recorded it had a technical component to it it was very crude for its time it had really not been done or perfected or really I guess you could say standardized like well you couldn't go to the store and buy film you had to make everything yourself so it was an experiment and it was one that worked and it's a really old surviving example and it's incredible it is an icon and it's amazing but it is a technical example and so without that technology component of experimenting with chemistry we wouldn't that photograph and I think you could make the same argument today is that I guess to some degree we have to have some technology otherwise we can't make an image so there is some kind of baseline to what we're doing now photography over the years has grown and I think this is where I want to show you another example is that we're at a point today where we I guess this is kind of a cliche thing to say but I feel like in many ways and I fall into this category too is that we get really close to the forest in fact so close to the forest that we can't see the trees and we don't really understand or make sense of what it is that we have and how powerful that is and I'll give you another example of this this monograph of photographs by Martin Moone kouchi I've talked about monkey in videos before I did one a long time ago that was just on him he was an incredible photographer and I think in many ways was a revolutionary example of somebody who influenced others so maybe he wasn't as famous as a guy like Richard Avedon but Avedon was hugely influenced by men cow cheese so there's mr. moon kouchi rocking a large-format camera that is what he photographed no autofocus no image stabilization it used sheet film it was big negatives and that's what he photographed with now by today's standards we have very small portable cameras with very advanced autofocus like for instance Sony are making just some amazing strides and what you can do with autofocus and your quote unquote hit rate with how successful you are with having images that are usable in the end so one would think back in the 1920s that shooting sports would be next to impossible let me show you what Martin did but there may be some cropping going on in these images but there was no frame rate or anything you took one image and then you had to flip the thing over to get to the next negative and when you understand how these images were made they are pretty impressive now this is not normal for the 1920s and I think that that speaks somewhat to men cauchy's talent because he was a photographer who was very unusual he had an enormous amount of talent was able to take the tools that he had and be able to work with them another example this is a hammer it is designed to do I guess two things you can drive nails with it and you can also remove nails with it but the hammer by itself is not going to build an amazing deck it's not going to design a house it is a tool very used for a very specific part of that bigger picture and I think in many ways the camera can be pretty much defined as that as well but to bring this back to Martin Moone kouchi moon kouchi used the tools that were available of his time and it wasn't the tools or the camera that made that work interesting it was his abilities as a photographer his ability to come in and interpret a situation and to create a photograph and I think more importantly his abilities to recognize the limitations of what the tool was allowing him to do and find ways to move beyond that and that's what made moon kouchi very interesting as a photographer now I also think it's important to contextualize what we're talking about because the world we live in today is very different than the world the moon kouchi lived in and we have seen this explosion in the last 15 years in photography that have really changed things in a much more dramatic fashion than all of the years that led up to that and we are in a situation now where we're not talking about the rock star photographer anymore who graces the cover of a fashion magazine and shows us these amazing images we're not talking about museums or galleries I mean everything's change photography is a lot more democratized than it used to be a lot of that has to do with the fact that everybody's got a cell phone with a camera on it and that you're able to use that to get with any moment of something and there's an intimacy there it's not a big camera it's a little more stealth and I think that can be a really beautiful thing actually sure there's a lot of bad cell phone work that's been done but there's also some really interesting things and this whole notion of the snapshot and the the moment and I think that that's what's really interesting about that that started to change things also I think there's a utilitarian layer to that you can use photography for practical purposes like I will do it I'm sure everyone else has to when you're out of printer ink you go take a picture of what model printer you have so you know what it is when you get there it's easier than writing it down so there's that but this is a very different world that we live in now and cellphones are one of three things that I think changed that the other two being the move to digital photography and I'm not talking about the quality versus film I'm talking about the immediacy and the fact that it's just so much faster you don't have to have your images processed there's no waiting time it's instant same holds true for the phone and then I think the third thing that you see on the phone also is the Internet and the fact that you can share things immediately and think how this has impacted things like event photography news photography humans Forte's photography literally you can have the game-winning play on the internet on a news website within literally seconds of it actually happening and that is something that has changed everything and the world we live in is just much different we have social media now we have everyone kind of has a way to publish their work and even find an audience for that work and for better or worse that's where we are may give you another example there is a film that was made in the late 60s you've probably heard of known as the soup Reuter film where Abraham Zapruder was an amateur filmmaker who had an 8 millimeter camera and accidentally photographed the assassination of a US president this was a very significant film and not from an artistic standpoint but from an evidence standpoint but when you put that into context of today I mean minor news stories everybody's got their phone out filming it so this is something that's very commonplace now that wasn't so commonplace back then so what are we doing now to push beyond the technical limitations and that's I guess the heart of this discussion that I want to talk about maybe where that sits so to put technology into the context of our world today let me ask you a question how many cameras have been announced or released in the last six months I bet you'd have to count it I would I don't know if hand a lot how many cameras will we see over the next 11 months through the remainder of this year and I think that's actually kind of interesting because this is a really different place that we're in right now and I'm not trying to belittle the technology that we're being shown because these cameras are just absolutely amazing I was fortunate enough to be and have been invited to the Sony event last week I got to use the beta firmware for the a9 that will be in production released this summer and I also got to use the a 6400 and the autofocus that is available on those cameras is unbelievable it's like nothing you've ever used before on a camera now the further question comes into play is is it something you need is a photographer and that question is going to be answered differently for you it's gonna be answered differently from me and everyone else it depends on what your needs are but my point is is that we have tools that are available to us now that are unbelievably good and they are better than anything we've ever had in fact Martin Moone kouchi wouldn't I mean they're wilder than anything he could have dreamed of but in that context of what he was able to do with ours where are we pushing that envelope today and that's what I'm curious about and as many of you know I mean I love the history of photography and for a long time that's all I covered on this channel I did a lot of videos on the history of photography I'm not a historian but it's something that I'm just really passion about because I love photography I love the lineage of what has led us up to this point and it's just been on my mind a lot lately is like where are we right now in the greater scheme of things and where does our creative side come in to play with that and I think that's really important I want to give you one more example here and bear with me this is a weird one but this is a music example and it's one of us before but if you consider an instrument like the banjo now this is an instrument that comes with a stigma usually you think of it as being used in bluegrass music or country music and more maybe early parlor music or African music but anyway my point is is that it has kind of a limitation around it that's kind of mentally defined by people and the way it sounds the way it looks it's name so on and so forth well in the late 80s early 90s along comes this banjo player named bailiff lek who blows the doors off the joint he comes in he's playing rock jazz bluegrass bebop music he's playing classical music he's doing it all like no other banjo player that came before him he pays homage to the people that came before him because he had an early bluegrass association that he was with but he took it much further than that and that's what I see in Martin Moone kouchi and that's what I'm wondering where are we gonna see that in the modern world of photography and it's it's hard to say because like you wouldn't know what today looks like unless you're from the future but what are we doing today to at least try to shape that do we have a bailiff lek that's taking one of these cameras with these amazing features and these things that we've never had before and using them not only to their full potential but figuring out how to move beyond that and I think that's where the creative side comes in or is this even possible I think it's an interesting question and this is where I want to hear from you guys because I think it's something that in the age of social media and the age of the masses and the democratization of photography is not addressed enough and it's not something we asked ourselves enough and of course all this depends on what you strive for is a photographer and where your interests and your goals and your ambitions lead to but assume most the people who watch this channel who comment have some kind of ambition and the place that they want to go with photography and I guess that's my question this is by no means ending in this video I think this is a conversation worth having more and more in the futures but I want to know what you guys think drop me a comment below let me know what you think I'll see you guys in the next video until then laterin this video I want to open up a philosophical conversation with you guys this is something we haven't done in awhile but it's something that's been on my mind for I guess the last six months and namely I want to talk about the technical side of photography versus the creative side of photography and where is that balance where does that line drawn and I think this is something that's fairly interesting because in the last six months we have seen this marketing blitzkrieg from Japanese camera manufacturers new models more autofocus features more megapixels just all these incredible tools that we've never had before and at what point is this a marketing thing versus what we actually need and I think this is where we can open up some interesting conversation with this because I don't think there's a right or wrong answer but I think it's something worth exploring and I've got a couple image examples that I want to share with you and I'm gonna start with this one I suppose this is very appropriate to begin with because this is what is known to be the first photograph this is a photo of a rooftop it is an 8-hour long exposure that was made by Joseph Nessa for knee ups in about 1826 or 1827 now it may be miss named there is evidence that there were earlier photographs than this but this is the oldest surviving example so therefore is what we refer to as the first photograph is the longest fixed image if you will and I guess you know one way you could interpret this and I've actually heard people do it is you could go all curatorial on this and you can say well the the amazing thing of this photo with the eight-hour exposure represents an interpretation of the tranquility and the peaceful lifestyle of 19th century parasite you know but that would be complete BS this image is a technical icon only it represents not nothing it's not important it represents the beginning of photography and the lineage up to where we are now and I think as a photographer it's an image that I am fascinated with because of that but there's really not an emotional or creative interpretation to this other than the fact that it is an image that was recorded it had a technical component to it it was very crude for its time it had really not been done or perfected or really I guess you could say standardized like well you couldn't go to the store and buy film you had to make everything yourself so it was an experiment and it was one that worked and it's a really old surviving example and it's incredible it is an icon and it's amazing but it is a technical example and so without that technology component of experimenting with chemistry we wouldn't that photograph and I think you could make the same argument today is that I guess to some degree we have to have some technology otherwise we can't make an image so there is some kind of baseline to what we're doing now photography over the years has grown and I think this is where I want to show you another example is that we're at a point today where we I guess this is kind of a cliche thing to say but I feel like in many ways and I fall into this category too is that we get really close to the forest in fact so close to the forest that we can't see the trees and we don't really understand or make sense of what it is that we have and how powerful that is and I'll give you another example of this this monograph of photographs by Martin Moone kouchi I've talked about monkey in videos before I did one a long time ago that was just on him he was an incredible photographer and I think in many ways was a revolutionary example of somebody who influenced others so maybe he wasn't as famous as a guy like Richard Avedon but Avedon was hugely influenced by men cow cheese so there's mr. moon kouchi rocking a large-format camera that is what he photographed no autofocus no image stabilization it used sheet film it was big negatives and that's what he photographed with now by today's standards we have very small portable cameras with very advanced autofocus like for instance Sony are making just some amazing strides and what you can do with autofocus and your quote unquote hit rate with how successful you are with having images that are usable in the end so one would think back in the 1920s that shooting sports would be next to impossible let me show you what Martin did but there may be some cropping going on in these images but there was no frame rate or anything you took one image and then you had to flip the thing over to get to the next negative and when you understand how these images were made they are pretty impressive now this is not normal for the 1920s and I think that that speaks somewhat to men cauchy's talent because he was a photographer who was very unusual he had an enormous amount of talent was able to take the tools that he had and be able to work with them another example this is a hammer it is designed to do I guess two things you can drive nails with it and you can also remove nails with it but the hammer by itself is not going to build an amazing deck it's not going to design a house it is a tool very used for a very specific part of that bigger picture and I think in many ways the camera can be pretty much defined as that as well but to bring this back to Martin Moone kouchi moon kouchi used the tools that were available of his time and it wasn't the tools or the camera that made that work interesting it was his abilities as a photographer his ability to come in and interpret a situation and to create a photograph and I think more importantly his abilities to recognize the limitations of what the tool was allowing him to do and find ways to move beyond that and that's what made moon kouchi very interesting as a photographer now I also think it's important to contextualize what we're talking about because the world we live in today is very different than the world the moon kouchi lived in and we have seen this explosion in the last 15 years in photography that have really changed things in a much more dramatic fashion than all of the years that led up to that and we are in a situation now where we're not talking about the rock star photographer anymore who graces the cover of a fashion magazine and shows us these amazing images we're not talking about museums or galleries I mean everything's change photography is a lot more democratized than it used to be a lot of that has to do with the fact that everybody's got a cell phone with a camera on it and that you're able to use that to get with any moment of something and there's an intimacy there it's not a big camera it's a little more stealth and I think that can be a really beautiful thing actually sure there's a lot of bad cell phone work that's been done but there's also some really interesting things and this whole notion of the snapshot and the the moment and I think that that's what's really interesting about that that started to change things also I think there's a utilitarian layer to that you can use photography for practical purposes like I will do it I'm sure everyone else has to when you're out of printer ink you go take a picture of what model printer you have so you know what it is when you get there it's easier than writing it down so there's that but this is a very different world that we live in now and cellphones are one of three things that I think changed that the other two being the move to digital photography and I'm not talking about the quality versus film I'm talking about the immediacy and the fact that it's just so much faster you don't have to have your images processed there's no waiting time it's instant same holds true for the phone and then I think the third thing that you see on the phone also is the Internet and the fact that you can share things immediately and think how this has impacted things like event photography news photography humans Forte's photography literally you can have the game-winning play on the internet on a news website within literally seconds of it actually happening and that is something that has changed everything and the world we live in is just much different we have social media now we have everyone kind of has a way to publish their work and even find an audience for that work and for better or worse that's where we are may give you another example there is a film that was made in the late 60s you've probably heard of known as the soup Reuter film where Abraham Zapruder was an amateur filmmaker who had an 8 millimeter camera and accidentally photographed the assassination of a US president this was a very significant film and not from an artistic standpoint but from an evidence standpoint but when you put that into context of today I mean minor news stories everybody's got their phone out filming it so this is something that's very commonplace now that wasn't so commonplace back then so what are we doing now to push beyond the technical limitations and that's I guess the heart of this discussion that I want to talk about maybe where that sits so to put technology into the context of our world today let me ask you a question how many cameras have been announced or released in the last six months I bet you'd have to count it I would I don't know if hand a lot how many cameras will we see over the next 11 months through the remainder of this year and I think that's actually kind of interesting because this is a really different place that we're in right now and I'm not trying to belittle the technology that we're being shown because these cameras are just absolutely amazing I was fortunate enough to be and have been invited to the Sony event last week I got to use the beta firmware for the a9 that will be in production released this summer and I also got to use the a 6400 and the autofocus that is available on those cameras is unbelievable it's like nothing you've ever used before on a camera now the further question comes into play is is it something you need is a photographer and that question is going to be answered differently for you it's gonna be answered differently from me and everyone else it depends on what your needs are but my point is is that we have tools that are available to us now that are unbelievably good and they are better than anything we've ever had in fact Martin Moone kouchi wouldn't I mean they're wilder than anything he could have dreamed of but in that context of what he was able to do with ours where are we pushing that envelope today and that's what I'm curious about and as many of you know I mean I love the history of photography and for a long time that's all I covered on this channel I did a lot of videos on the history of photography I'm not a historian but it's something that I'm just really passion about because I love photography I love the lineage of what has led us up to this point and it's just been on my mind a lot lately is like where are we right now in the greater scheme of things and where does our creative side come in to play with that and I think that's really important I want to give you one more example here and bear with me this is a weird one but this is a music example and it's one of us before but if you consider an instrument like the banjo now this is an instrument that comes with a stigma usually you think of it as being used in bluegrass music or country music and more maybe early parlor music or African music but anyway my point is is that it has kind of a limitation around it that's kind of mentally defined by people and the way it sounds the way it looks it's name so on and so forth well in the late 80s early 90s along comes this banjo player named bailiff lek who blows the doors off the joint he comes in he's playing rock jazz bluegrass bebop music he's playing classical music he's doing it all like no other banjo player that came before him he pays homage to the people that came before him because he had an early bluegrass association that he was with but he took it much further than that and that's what I see in Martin Moone kouchi and that's what I'm wondering where are we gonna see that in the modern world of photography and it's it's hard to say because like you wouldn't know what today looks like unless you're from the future but what are we doing today to at least try to shape that do we have a bailiff lek that's taking one of these cameras with these amazing features and these things that we've never had before and using them not only to their full potential but figuring out how to move beyond that and I think that's where the creative side comes in or is this even possible I think it's an interesting question and this is where I want to hear from you guys because I think it's something that in the age of social media and the age of the masses and the democratization of photography is not addressed enough and it's not something we asked ourselves enough and of course all this depends on what you strive for is a photographer and where your interests and your goals and your ambitions lead to but assume most the people who watch this channel who comment have some kind of ambition and the place that they want to go with photography and I guess that's my question this is by no means ending in this video I think this is a conversation worth having more and more in the futures but I want to know what you guys think drop me a comment below let me know what you think I'll see you guys in the next video until then later\n"