With increase in use of smartphones as cameras and companies using non-professionals for images, the quality of photography is taking a disastrous down turn,and the major problem is that the general public are accepting this without complaining!
One of the biggest causalities is catalogue photography, once the bread winner for a studio now pretty much done in house by a twelve year old with a smartphone – the image quality is atrocious, this is one area where getting it right I thought
would be paramount as its all about desirability and presentation was the key to give the product its best chance at selling.
Recently I strolled (actually i jogged) through a major high street clothing retailer which used photography to show the new range on large billboards suspended from the ceiling in store – to say the image quality was bad would be a compliment, the models looked bored the lighting was flat and some the images weren’t even sharp a basic requirement of the job! it certainly did not inspire me to purchase or even stop in the store. I know we are in a recession but if you want to sell your product and present it in an inspiring and desirable way get better photography!
In the old days when we used to shoot on film and we sent our pictures away for processing the lab would often attached stickers to our rubbish prints telling us that we either had light leaking into our camera or some other fault. Now we download an app which replicates camera faults and turns our in-focus great photography in to blurry,faded,cross processed rubbish… this is why the general public do not see the mediocrity that is being peddled they are already adulterating perfectly good imagery with gimmicky filters designed to “look the 70’s” – WHY? the 70’s were rubbish! digital compact cameras deliver better imagery today than a expensive film SLR did in the 70’s.
Its time we pulled our socks up and stopped accepting mediocrity, bring back those amazing models in amazing landscapes or those catalogues that were great just for their photography not the products!
corporaltrim 