A very interesting article about how current technology will eliminate the working methods of the individual pro photographer and change the game again. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer thinks we don’t need pro photographers anymore but she missed the point. It’s not that there are so many humans with camera’s – it’s the ability to place cameras everywhere we need, to get every viewpoint recorded, that now changes the game in a big way. Clayton Cubitt has decided we can forget about the Decisive Moment because we now live in the Constant Moment.
With the iPhone 5 camera module currently estimated to cost about $10/unit, and dropping like a rock with the inexorability of Moore’s Law, we can see how even an individual photographer might deploy hundreds of these micro-networked cameras for less than it costs to buy one current professional DSLR.
What might a photographer do with a grid of networked cameras like this, with their phone as the “viewfinder?” A street photographer could deploy them all over a neighborhood of interest, catching weeks worth of decisive moments to choose from at leisure.
A photojournalist could embed them all across a war zone, on both sides of the battle, to achieve a level of reality and objectivity never seen before. A sports photographer could blanket the stadium and capture every angle, for the entire game, even from each player’s perspective.
Clayton Cubitt via The Decisive Moment is Dead. Long Live the Constant Moment.
