The Decline in the Quality of Photography and the Real-world Consequences
It's easy to get caught up in various discussion online about all things photographic, both technical and artistic. Some of these discussions are useful, but many are frankly nonsense. Some of the photography tropes that have become accepted in some quarters are doing active harm to the art of photography. The biggest of these is the notion that quality doesn’t matter. I see this over and over again, and while I’ve discussed this before, and why it does actually matter, I wanted to talk about the non-abstract real-world effects of this. The quality of photography used in professional settings is declining, and it's leading to a drop in quality of magazines and books and other publications of all types (not just photography related.)
Let me tell you a story.
The other day I was in a book store for the first time in six months. As we slowly come out of lockdown here in Ireland, it was the first week this year that non-essential retail was allowed to open, and I took the opportunity to visit my favourite store in Dublin, the city’s biggest bookshop. While browsing through the books I found myself in the nature section, and there I saw what looked to be a fascinating book on woodlands. The cover had a beautiful photo of a forest on it and I thought to myself — this looks interesting. Picking it up to have a flick through the pages, I was immediately disappointed by what was inside.
The photos were terrible. Just terrible.
Composition was OK, but the technical quality was shockingly bad. Images were over sharpened to the point of being ridiculous. There was some poor quality noise reduction on some images, coupled with this clear over sharpening, resulting in what looked like something taken on a cell phone from 10 years ago. Some photos didn’t have the chromatic aberration fixed, and was so bad that they looked like a printing error. One of the photos, which could have been beautiful, was obviously shot using a very cheap lens because it was a wide-angle shot, but the edges of the frame were extremely soft, looking almost out of focus. And not the nice quality bokeh out of focus, but the “looks like it was shot through sellotape” look.
Could I have been overly picky because I’m sensitive to these things? Maybe, but I’ve also worked on both sides of this. I’ve worked as a photographer and a designer, and as a designer, I know many of my clients in the past would not have accepted images of this quality. Most professional magazines of any caliber would not have accepted this quality. That's’ not me being picky, that’s experience from clients rejecting images.
And yet, an editor chose to publish a book full of these poor quality images. I’m not going to name the book because this is not about shaming the author or the publisher. This isn’t an isolated case. I’m seeing this more and more. I saw another book a while ago on gardens that had similarly poor images in it. Furthermore, I’ve even seen it in a few independent magazines too. It’s really disappointing to see.
Every time I see some stupid article or YouTube video telling people they don’t need to worry about image quality, or that gear doesn’t matter or that you shouldn’t chimp and so on, then I get really annoyed because it’s not just an abstract or ideological argument, it’s having a real-world effect. If you’re following someone, or doing an online course and the instructor says any of these things, stop immediately and unfollow them. They’re full of shit.
If you want to be a professional photographer, then you need to know all aspects of photography, not just one. It’s not enough to think you have “a good eye” and leave it at that. It’s not enough to think you can make a good composition, but don’t care if the shot isn’t fully in focus or not, or properly exposed or not. If you are genuinely serious about being a professional, especially if you want to work in the field where images are published, then you need to know the technical aspects of photography, the creative aspects, and the basics of post-production. If you think “I don’t like spending time behind a computer” then get over it. People say that Instagram and social media is killing photography, but it’s the attitudes that certain internet popular “photographers” are instilling in others which are just wrong, that are killing photography.
And its not just photographers. Its editors and publishers too.
It used to be that you have to have a technically perfect image to be accepted to agencies like Getty, but a while ago they dropped their standards. Now anyone can submit any image regardless of the technical errors. This was a terrible decision that the company made. (I even verified this was the case with a company representative a while ago because I couldn’t believe it) Clearly this isn’t just Getty. Some publishers are getting more and more lax with the quality they accept. The result is a lowering across the board of the quality of photography being accepted.
I suspect that some of this is cutting costs too. Publishers are using images from people who are maybe not properly trained professionals, or who they came across on instagram, and are cutting costs by paying less than what they would otherwise pay. I see this in the design space too. I’m sure that this has always been the case, and even when photography was still analogue, people still cut costs like this. The funny thing is though, you could get away with a lot more in the analogue world. Badly processed digital images just seem to really stand out, compared to film photos that may have a few technical errors.
Now, I do want to end on a positive note, though. While I have highlighted the growing problem, it is still the minority thankfully. There are still lots of very high-quality books and magazines that do care, and publish beautiful and quality photos. There are some amazing and spectacular images getting published every day. My latest obsession is food photography, and recipe books. There are some incredible and beautiful photos in many recipe books these days, and some are truly beautiful. And this is just one genre. For me, the gold standard is still National Geographic, and luckily, they still have their high standards intact.
Cover Photo by Zukiman Mohamad from Pexels
Help Support the Blog
Patreon
If you like what you see here and you find this useful, then you can help support this blog and help me keep making great content like this by supporting me on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. There are a number of options available with different rewards, such as behind the scenes content, special Patreon only videos and more. Check out my Patreon Page for more details, and a big thanks to everyone already supporting this blog on Patreon.
Buy me a coffee!
If you’d rather not use Patreon, but still want to say thanks or help, then you can feed my caffeine habit and buy me a coffee via PayPal with a one off donation to my PayPal tip jar.
Join our Facebook Group
If you want to discuss anything you’ve read here on my website, or saw on my youtube channel, or if you want to share images you’ve created using any of my techniques or presets, then I’ve started a new Facebook Group just for that.
Note that this post contains paid affiliate links. We get a small commission for purchases made through these links, which helps run this site.
