Cadillac Ranch and The Assembly Line Photographer
“I want you to see something.” A large man with an iPhone in his hand tells me. “Look at this.”
“Nice.” I say as I look at his perfectly framed and amazingly clear image of the rusty cars in the setting sun.
“I used to have a fancy camera.” He says nodding at my Digital SLR. “But I just downloaded this HDR app and look at how great it works.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I say. “You used to have to worry about film, focal length, shutter speed, and all kinds of other stuff. Now you just point and shoot.”
“I used to think I knew a lot about photography.” He says as he wandered off to take more HDR photos of the Cadillac Ranch at Sunset. “Now I wonder about everything else I know.”
Photography is one of those areas where technology has radically changed the landscape. It’s now possible to do the things that Ansel Adams spent months doing in a matter of minutes. It’s possible to do things Ansel Adams never dreamed of.
For the most part, Assembly Line Portraits has always drug it’s heels in when it comes to taking advantage of these new innovations. Yes we all use Digital Cameras now and we all do some kind of modification of the images-but not much. The Current Company has limited their alterations to mats and boarders and the option of B&W and sepia. The Passers can do a bit of cropping, which means that The Photographer no longer has control over how his images are to be displayed or sold.
Being at the Cadillac Ranch reminded me that it’s harder to impress people than it used to be. I liked the tech that made the man’s instant High Dynamic Range Image possible, but I was not so blown away by it that I wanted to run out and buy an iPhone.
So now I have to think about my Subjects. I can do a bit of fancy lighting and posing, but how impressed are they by the portraits I produce? Well, not very.
As a photographer the urge to surround myself with the latest and the greatest photo gadgets is a strong one. And there is good reason for this. While it can be argued that great images have been captured with whatever camera was available, most great portraits are taken with high caliber photo equipment. The problem, of course, is that everyone now has high caliber photo equipment.
I was watching a Dean Collins video not too long ago in which Dean talked about his equipment and how it didn’t really matter that much. The photograph and the subject are what is important, not the camera or lights used. He then picked up his five thousand dollar Hasselblad and walked back to his ten thousand foot studio to arrange the dozens of lights and backgrounds he had at his disposal. Dean Collins was the king of portrait photography in the 1980s and his use of light panels and gradiated gels became clichés of New Wave music videos.
The basic Assembly Line Portraits setup has not changed much-there is a camera, a subject, lights, and a background. Now there is usually a computer involved in the process and most of the cameras are digital instead of film. There is still a bit of difference between a cell phone and Pro Level digital camera. The components are a bit different-the CCD that captures the image is more than just a Megapixel number and the lens is more than a hidden pinpoint.
But the gap is closing. While there will always be that geewhiz camera that cost twenty times what a cellphone does, the quality of the images a cellphone can capture is also getting better. Then there is the whole Facebook effect, where no one really cares about studio portraits any more-a snapshot is good enough. Parents don’t bore their friends with photo albums any more, they post all the photos of the little darlings to their blog. You can look if you want, but can stay away if you as well.
I have my doubts about the whole future of Assembly Line Portraits. I can see a time when all directories are online and instantly updated, and something that is of real use to an orginazation, not just an excuse for a Company to come in and sell portraits. There are already a few online directory places. There are already photographers who sell nothing but CDs of images and don’t bother with prints. Like the sellers of horse buggys and isinglass, I think our days are numbered.