Is photography as a hobby dying?

[myotis]

I'm not sure how to judge whether photography is dying as a hobby, but over the twenty years or so since I've been visiting the RSPB reserve at Ham Wall in Somerset, there has been a steady increase in the number of people visiting it with good quality cameras and long lenses.

When I say increase, I just mean I have "noticed more".

This increase hasn't just been men, it's also been children and teenagers, women on their own (across a spectrum of ages) and couples where both are carrying a good camera with a long lens.

Occasionally, on some days you feel that almost everyone is a "photographer", and I get a surprise when I realise it's actually a telescope attached to a tripod and not a camera.

The National Trust property at Stourhead in Wiltshire, is another place where I feel I am seeing more "good" cameras than I used to. Last week there were even a few people with DSLRs: one was Nikon D780, one was a Nikon I couldn't identify, and a third was a "gripped" Canon.

The week before at National Trust Montacute, there was someone with a Nikon D850 and another with a Leica Q (no idea which model).

 

[TimHughes]

Perhaps the irony is that cell phone photography hasn't killed traditional photography; it's becoming "traditional" photography...

I'm not convinced the underlying desire to go somewhere, see something and make a photograph has declined at all. If anything, the ease of doing so with the phone in your pocket has increased the take-up of the hobby. Look at how many famous photographic locations are now mobbed with people wanting to make the same image.

 

[Jonny Guitar.]

It has nearly died for me. Since going digital the 'magic' of film is gone.
Taking pictures is undeniabley on the up.
"Photography " died with film.

I've said it before, happy to be shot down again.

 

[sirch]

I suppose we need to try to distinguish "photography as a hobby" from the ubiquitous snapshot. I imagine we all have some sense the distinction but its quite a slippery thing to pin down.

 

[lindsay]

Someone alluded to this vaguely earlier: that it is the process of photography that enthusiasts and increasing numbers of people enjoy, more than the end result. Even with a phone camera, people enjoy taking the image and looking at the results in the moment, but they rarely if ever go back to it. If they do, it's to recap the moment when they took it.

Even with digital, the process is there to be enjoyed, but it is different to the film process. I really enjoy doing film, all the different sorts, then processing it in some cases myself. But then it merges with the digital process because I then might edit the scans, or make new ones to edit from the negs if it;s film, and I have a further new process which I do enjoy too. I'm not very good at any of it but that actually doesn't matter much to me because I enjoy the "doing". Some people work for a better quality image, and that's important to them. It's nice for me too. But it's always the journey more than the arrival that floats my boat.

As to a comment earlier about groups on FB and the like: they don;t work so well. another popular forum closed and went to FB, then people started complaining about how the algorithm was decided what they were able to look at and in what order. Not a problem in a proper forum.

 

[kejago (Kev)]

As to a comment earlier about groups on FB and the like: they don;t work so well. another popular forum closed and went to FB, then people started complaining about how the algorithm was decided what they were able to look at and in what order. Not a problem in a proper forum.

There was a popular American forum, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was called, let alone find out. Could it be this one you are referring to?

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

I suppose we need to try to distinguish "photography as a hobby" from the ubiquitous snapshot. I imagine we all have some sense the distinction but its quite a slippery thing to pin down.

A camera shop owner once told me that he owed his nice house to Michelangelo Antonioni and David Hemmings. When the film "Blowup" came out in the mid 1960s, he claimed, his turnover doubled. People saw the film and decided they all wanted to be a photographer.

Blowup - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[cuthbert]

I believe in my lifetime there’s been 3 ‘booms’ in photography as a hobby. In the 70’s, the 80’s and the 2000’s. In the 90’s and since the early 2010’s there were (and are) fewer visible ‘people with cameras’.

What is different now though, is that casual photography is bigger than ever, but it’s with phones not cameras.

I believe in one of the early years of smartphones, there were more ‘photographs’ taken than in all the years up to that point. Everywhere you go you’ll see people taking pictures, it’s just not with cameras.

SLR’s became DSLR’s and are now mirrorless. The technology of the R5 though? Like magic compared to an old DSLR.

Yeah, when my children were young in the late 00s-early 2010, you saw so many people, other new parents out with “proper” cameras, but as phones got better, you see it less and less, to the point that I just don’t see many people at all, snapping with a big R5/6 equivalent camera any more. Even in touristy places, the big mirrorless / dslr is quite a rarity.

My own observation, looking at Flickr and various other social sites, is that more photos than ever are being taken, but because of that, it’s actually quite hard to find genuinely really interesting and artistic photos. Not just photos of beautiful things, but something actually created or crafted. Ones that make you go, wow, and save it to your phone for inspiration.

There is a lot of stuff that’s very trite, not very challenging, and I think that’s what you see, imo.