"Photography Changes Everything" by Marvin Heiferman Reflection

What I got from Marvin Heiferman's article is the title, exactly. Ironic ay?

He talked about how photographs have changed, the meaning behind them, the way we take photographs, the things we use photographs for, everything about them, and it all has changed. Even in my 22 years, well I'll say like 12 because I was young before and hardly knew anything but that's beside the point, photography has changed so much in my time. My first real camera was a Minolta 3, it was a film camera and I loved it. I still love it, I miss film. Shooting film is something kind of magical that not a lot of the kids of today will really understand. Then I moved up to digital about two years ago when my mom bought me my Canon Rebel T3. It's my baby. And as much as I love digital, it's something new and different, even still.

Now-a-days everyone can be a photographer though. You don't have to have a big, fancy camera to be a "photographer" and that kind of pisses me off. Just because you have a camera on your phone and post selfies and pictures of sunsets with filters on your Instagram account does not make you a photographer, it makes you a "photographer." By that I mean, yeah you take the time to snap a picture of something you like but is it worthy? Is it worthy of being shown in the Smithsonian or MoMa? I mean, we are kind of getting to that age where yeah that could happen if it's a compelling series or something but, I still think it's just a bunch of baloney.

And Heiferman talks about this in the article, talking about the changing of the medium and the meanings of photographs. To me, I love the old way, I love film and Polaroids. And that will always be a form of photography but it might start to get over shadowed by the Insta-famous generation we live in.

Heiferman also makes a point about other kinds of photographers and the differences in what makes a good photograph. And it's a valid point. Not only does everyone see something differently when they look at a photograph, but depending on your background or your occupation you can see photographs differently too. He mentioned being asked to sit in on a photography talk at the Smithsonian with others to talk about it and was surrounded by a geographer, an astrophysicist, a former director of a major art museum and an information analyst for the CIA. Weird stuff, but they all have to look at photographs and look at them differently because of their profession and what they are needing to look for or are looking at.

Photography is a weird thing. I dig it.