Who the fark is Nick Jojola?

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  • #2691
    Yoyo
    Participant

    Let the hating begin.

    http://shinesquad.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/htc-one-free-fall-fashion-behind-the-scenes/
    http://www.nohoartsdistrict.com/index.php/north-hollywood-news/item/1143-an-interview-withnick-jojola

    Seriously though, if this new phone takes such good pictures, where’s the “money shot”?

    Furthermore, the Art Institute – Hollywood? Really? He couldn’t make in into any one of the dozen top 100 colleges and universities for art in California? (As ranked by US News…)

    I’ll continue with some general commentary on phone cameras. Until the last two weeks, I hadn’t used the camera on my phone for ages. First, I was at a very chic Honolulu nightclub for a cabaret show from a friend’s troupe. Holy moley, the camera on a Blackberry is horrible. It makes a cheap point-and-shoot look great in terms of autofocus capability and cycle speed. Then a friend posted some phone pics of herself dressed up for a formal dance. I now know what bad skin tone means.

    Come on everybody. You know you hate them. Let it all out here.

    #46837
    ennuipoet
    Participant

    I see more and more of these “Pro” shoots with cellphone, and I still have yet to see anything resembling decent photography. The Atlantic covered the White House Correspondents Dinner with muthafarking Instagram!

    All of this has left me with the inescapable conclusion that shit sells. It is part of the movement elevate the mundane, to make our society into some Harrison Bergeron dystopia where no one can do or be better than anyone else. If we make everything suck, and no one is good, ipso facto we are all good!

    It’s not just photography, ANYTHING creative can be done by EVERYONE, by gadgetry and software. Never mind learning how do to something well, just learn how to push a button and the system will do the rest. So long as someone can make a buck by letting someone have the illusion of competence, then put it on the market.

    By watering the pool of public perception, by making mediocre the goal we rob everyone of the ability to improve.

    #46838
    ravnostic
    Participant

    ennui that’s the most relevant rant I’ve read on the subject. Bravo!!

    **golf claps**

    Care to go divoting?

    #46839
    staplermofo
    Participant

    I don’t think they’re trying to portray this guy as a pro. Their video clearly shows he’s a just a student living with his mom. It’s a marketing gimmick to demonstrate low shutter lag and marginal flare.

    I think the dumbing down of taste is the result of the market, not the producers. It’s gratifying to run around yelling “You suck at appreciating things”, or “Stop buying into this crap! THIS IS WHY WE DON’T HAVE NICE THINGS!” for a while, but you can’t change people.
    With virtually no more effort (often with less effort!) they could make their lives much better. You can show them how. You can sometimes force the better experience on them. They might even agree with you, but you can’t change them. They’re going to be the same people and they will, for whatever reason, deprive themselves. You can kill them though. We can talk about that in private if you’re interested.

    #46840
    Kestrana
    Participant

    I sympathize with the ranting here but art movements like history itself are extremely cyclical. When you compare what they produced during the medieval period compared with the works of the Greeks and Romans, for example, I think you can agree that it’s crap by comparison and it had little to do with technology since the ideas behind mixing paints and making tiles were still present. Hell, even in the 50s, IMHO there was a downturn. Andy Warhol aside, I mean, Jackson Pollock? Really? How the fuck did that guy get famous?

    And tech isn’t all bad. Peter From on G+ transforms photos into amazing works of art in CS5. When he does post an actual photograph, it’s not any better than what we can do. But his creations are worth money imo.

    #46841
    ennuipoet
    Participant

    Kes, it’s NOT an art movement, it’s a technological one. The human lifts a device, presses and button and calls it art. There is no actual effort, no skill, no eye, no vision in 99% of what passes for photography on Instagram. Yes, there are people doing amazing things with the technology, creating compelling images and sharing them with the world, but they are swallowed in a deluge of mediocrity veneered with computer generated faux filters and then spewed out with the heading of “art”. The example you note of Peter From, he is using technology to enhance his native abilities, not simply passing a filter over the top and image and proclaiming it a masterpiece. Even Warhol and Pollock had to have an understanding of the fundamentals before they could break all the rules, nothing in Instagram teaches the fundamentals of composition, color balance and exposure, no one is learning how to do it, they are just doing it.

    I don’t even think the mass of people using Instagram are calling it “art”, they are calling it “fun” and that I will agree with! It is this media driven frenzy that takes what clearly a neat idea and trumps it as the next great movement in art. They hold a false presumption that one can be good at something without taking the time and effort to actually learn it. By the logic of Instagram, I should be able to safely take and land a 747 full of passengers because I can push the autopilot button! We are going from a species of tool creators to a species of tools, whose only reason for existing is to push the button and receive a pellet!

    Rav: I would, but I am scheduled to have my blinding glasses updated today.

    #46842
    Kestrana
    Participant

    But the problem is that art is tied to technology. We’re at the point it’s inseparable. I mean, you’re shooting with digital and processing on a computer aren’t you?

    Instagram is to real photography as a child’s watercolor is to Monet. Just because we like the Monet and deem it “real art” doesn’t mean the child’s creation isn’t art, it just has a different value. MSM is embracing Instagram because it’s hip and cool, a fun fad with millions of users (and it’s really cheap. Why pay people when you can get it for free? You can’t blame corporations for doing the same thing 95% of the population would do). Like most fads (Shaquielle O’Neil’s acting career, goldfish in shoes) it will die out eventually, only to get resurrected again some time in the future (My Little Ponies, Bell bottoms).

    I see this as the same controversy that happened in journalism in the 1890s – yellow journalism. We got away from it for a time, then we descended into propaganda in the 40s and 50s, then got back to some real journalism for a couple decades, but now it’s back (from outer space. it just walked in to find you here with that look upon it’s face).

    #46843
    ennuipoet
    Participant

    But the problem is that art is tied to technology. We’re at the point it’s inseparable. I mean, you’re shooting with digital and processing on a computer aren’t you?

    Inseparable? No. Bloody convenient? Yes. I am not railing against the technology, but the substitution of technology for talent. I read somewhere a quip that Instagram was the Autotune of photography. No one needs it, yet it crops up in more and more places. At some point in time we stop utilizing the technology and become dependent on it.

    Could I stop using digital entirely, revert to a wholly analog photography? Sure, it would take time and money, space that I don’t have but I could do it in just a few short weeks. Hell, I would probably enjoy it more than I do digital. Medium is NOT content, and that is error of the Instagram shippers! The content is shit, but the medium is so cool the content doesn’t matter. To be honest, this proves valid for 98% of EVERYTHING on the Internet.

    I agree, Instagram will fade into well deserved obscurity in a short while, to that Special Hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk in theaters. Yet the culture that spawned it continues to inflate, and will not go away until someone stands up, holds a mirror to a nation of naked people and points out their nudity.

    Please note, I am not saying I am in some way exceptional or my work is deserving of more merit because I feel this way. I have ten thousand times more to learn about photography, art in general, that I currently know. All I am saying is I know this, strive to change it, and accept my place in it. 😀

    #46844
    chupathingie
    Participant

    First sentence from the first link sums it up to me:
    “The most exaggerated product demonstration we?ve ever seen.”
    That’s all it is, really, a demo. They’re throwing in a few somewhat famous people and a dash of reality-TV-manufactured-fame to grab the LCD vote; basically “Let’s take a fresh face and make him famous”. I hope the guy realizes he’s about to maybe become the Justin Bieber of photography…

    #46845
    Yugoboy
    Participant

    I read somewhere a quip that Instagram was the Autotune of photography.

    I’d like credit for that, bud… 😆

    In a nation where talent shows are top rated, and any joker with a beat track and rhyming dictionary can land a recording contract you’re going to find that actual taste is over-rated.

    While I know my life has been greatly improved by the modern pharmaceutical industry, the rampant distribution of pills for this and that “as seen on TV” means everybody thinks they can solve their problems as easily as a click of a mouse, a flip of a switch, or the swallowing of two tablets.

    Real talent takes work to develop. How many child prodigies grow up to obscurity? How many “great” high school athletes find out in college they’re simply good or average when the talent pool deepens?

    I know we want to rail on Instagram (and it certainly deserves it), but it’s just as useless as telling the children here in my school that Justin Beiber is less talented than Tony Bennet, and that his career will be a (small) fraction of what Tony’s has been. It’s hard to ignore, but if we can somehow do it, we’ll be a little happier, I think.

    While I know that I’ll always be playing 5th fiddle around here, and that a win will be almost an accident, I still take pride in the work I put in, as well as every time someone compliments me on the work I do. Most of the people I meet on a daily basis don’t get to say “I could do that” when they see what I create.

    Whatever else Instagram does do, it cannot replace real talent. People will tire of it eventually (I hope). That, and/or the ubiquity of it will dilute the “wow” factor, and composition, lighting, color and talent will become impressive again.

    For further insight, please refer to the book “Outliers”

    #46846
    ennuipoet
    Participant

    I read somewhere a quip that Instagram was the Autotune of photography.

    I’d like credit for that, bud… 😆

    That was you! I couldn’t remember who or where, I just knew that it was brilliant.

    #46847
    fluffybunny
    Participant

    We are going from a species of tool creators to a species of tools,..

    That good sir, is the single most eloquent, succinct and lucid sentence encapsulating 15 years of me ranting. I am keeping that one on a plaque, my business card and on my bumper.

    #46848
    chupathingie
    Participant

    We are going from a species of tool creators to a species of tools,..

    That good sir, is the single most eloquent, succinct and lucid sentence encapsulating 15 years of me ranting. I am keeping that one on a plaque, my business card and on my bumper.

    Get on that, ennui. Copyright it and make me some bumper stickers dammit.

    #46849
    Yugoboy
    Participant

    We are going from a species of tool creators to a species of tools,..

    That good sir, is the single most eloquent, succinct and lucid sentence encapsulating 15 years of me ranting. I am keeping that one on a plaque, my business card and on my bumper.

    Get on that, ennui. Copyright it and make me some bumper stickers dammit.

    Yes… do that… much more universal and useful than my pithy comment you quoted above.

    #46850
    ennuipoet
    Participant

    We are going from a species of tool creators to a species of tools,..

    That good sir, is the single most eloquent, succinct and lucid sentence encapsulating 15 years of me ranting. I am keeping that one on a plaque, my business card and on my bumper.

    Get on that, ennui. Copyright it and make me some bumper stickers dammit.

    Yes… do that… much more universal and useful than my pithy comment you quoted above.

    Coming soon to a Zazzle store near you!

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 22 total)
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