I look at photographer Jack Hollingsworth’s Instagram feed and I really like a lot of the images -regardless of what camera they were taken with.  But he posted something recently that I just don’t understand.  He wrote, “iPhoneography like any other genres of photography, is a revolutionary process.  Adapt or die.  Evolve or vanish.  Transform or fade away.”

Exactly who are we encouraging to join this revolution?  Since pros and advanced amateurs already have cameras and use them all the time, I can only assume the people we are encouraging to join this revolution are more along the lines of ordinary folk.  So let’s take my wife’s cousin Kwame.  He’s what I call a regular guy who works a regular job (computer company) and is married to a regular girl -she doesn’t want to be a model as do most of the women I know and they have a couple of kids and they live in a nice house.  He also owns an iPhone 4s.

I just imagine the following conversation:
Me: “Dude you should start doing iPhoneography with that iPhone4s.”
Kwame: “iPhoneography? What’s that?”
Me: “You start shooting more photos with your iPhone. Like if you come across a sunset you like, you take a shot of it with your iPhone.  Or if you come across some red letters sprayed on a blue wall you take a photo of it.  Or maybe a weather beaten barn.  When you see one, you take a photo.”
Kwame: “Why would I want to do that”
Me: “Dude, it’s a revolution.  You have to join in or be left behind. “

Seriously, I don’t see any benefit for him in amassing a collection of hundreds of images of things that have no relevance in his life.  If i were going to encourage him to shoot, I might say, “What is the most annoying thing about your wife?  Photograph her doing it.  If you stay with her long enough, it won’t annoy you any more and that photo will be really amusing to the two of you.  But if you instead break up with her, one day you’ll look at that photo and smile that you no longer have to accept that behavior in your life.”  There are all sorts of things like this I could suggest to him to photograph that might never occur to him to photograph despite the fact that they have a relevance to his life.

But the idea of encouraging more regular people to whip out phones and shoot everything with no real purpose, just baffles me.  And that’s the real problem with iPhoneography -it is so easy to shoot with your phone the temptaion is to shoot anything and everything.  Am I the only person annoyed at watching people stand there and film street performers for 3 or 4 or 5 minutes straight? Who’s going to sit and watch this garbage?  Who’s going to sit and look at your photo of street lights fading into the horizon? “Check out this shot of a weather beaten sign I came across back in 2009″.  Who f’n cares?!?!!?

Howabout if you come across a nice sunset, you stop and look at it for a couple of minutes and then move along about your business, confident that you will find endless sights of beauty in your life forever and there is no need to capture and preserve them.  They aren’t going anywhere.  You may never see that particular sunset again, but rest assured, you’ll see another one tomorrow.  Put down the phone and enjoy it.

As usual, I was only allowed to shoot the first 3 songs of the performance tonight.  That’s been standard for concert photography for well over 10 years.  It’s goes by pretty quickly, but the funny thing is, I’m utilizing 3 very different cameras in that brief period of time.

The workhorse is the Nikon D3s.  My favorite concert lens is the 17-35 but for this show 90% of my Nikon shots were with the 24-70mm.  I think the 70-200mm stayed  in my Domke waist pouch for the full 3 songs.  I shot about 400 shots with the Nikon.  Spray and Pray -that’s my motto…

I’m also doing the occasional shot with the Leica M9.  There’s no real reason to use the Leica other than the fact that I like shooting with it.  The Nikon is a superior concert camera in pretty much every way, but there’s something satisfying about using a camera that has retro styling and design but modern digital image capture.  I did about 30 performance shots with the M9 and 35mm Summicron.  Pretty much every one was out of focus with the exception of the last few where Trey had his back to the crowd.  Technically, the image is “off”, with a blue channel that is blown out.  And yet, it’s my favorite image of the night.

And finally, there’s the iPhone where I capture the Instagram/Twitter shot.  This is my least favorite way to capture an image.  Shooting with the iPhone has gotten better since we can now use an actual button (volume up) rather than touch the screen to capture an image.  However, since there’s no real way to adjust exposure, I tend to find shooting with the iPhone less satisfying than most people seem to find it but most of the time I’ll take a few seconds to capture something with the iPhone.

I caught these two as I was exiting the Trey Songz “Angels With Heart” benefit concert at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.  I was struck by the contrast between their raw style on the street outside the venue, and the more polished style embodied by Trey’s “angels”, (as they are known), inside the venue.

I was waiting for a flight home from LAX when I saw these guys, The Biters, looking so very rock and roll.  I asked to take their photo and we did a 60 second shoot right there in the airport.  I liked their vibe and I think it came through pretty well in the photo. I was going for something akin to that shot of The Who sleeping in the British flag.    Shot with my Leica M9 that is often hanging on my shoulder.