There’s been an upsurge in existential angst in the global photography community recently, much of it centered on the release of a new smartphone application (app) called “Threads.”

This app is intended, at least according to some of the press, to compete with Twitter now that Elon Musk has taken Twitter in a new direction.

Fun fact: if you go to threads.com, it’s not the new app. It’s an older app that is not free and looks very different than Meta’s release this week. Meta’s new app’s website, threads.net,  has only a QR code to scan with your phone to get the app. Confusing? Welcome to the Internet.

There have been a lot of social media sites and apps that have come and gone over the years, like Hipstamatic, Vine, Yik Yak, Myspace, Google Plus, and on and on. Those apps didn’t fail because they were bad. They failed because they didn’t “catch on.” I only need to point to the inexplicable popularity of TikTok as evidence of this.

And that neatly circles back to an age-old question: do your photos matter? Do they matter if no one sees them? I am loath to think that the only legitimate adjudication of art is that thousands or millions of people see it, but that seems more and more like the central goal of creating photos, videos, and memes.

Ultimately, each one of us gets to decide what’s important and what’s trivial. Are your pictures important because you had fun making them? Shared with family? Shared on social media? Had them printed to hang on the walls at your house or office? You get to decide.

I’m lucky. I get to make a living sharing my photography and writing with my community, and that community – you – are definitely a great audience.

Photographers.

They are generally not positive, life-affirming, goal-encouraging people. They mostly want to tell you how much they know, and what an idiot your are.

There is a lot of ego in the game, and that ego was largely bred in the fires of middle school.

Example: cheerful photographer decides to try a Nikkor DX lens on an FX camera. He likes what he gets, and then asks a pretty straightforward question:

“Why is this a DX designated lens when it works flawlessly on FX cameras, with even great corner sharpness?”
“Why?  Mostly because of the noticeable light fall-off towards the edges and corners of the FX frame, as can been seen in your images.” You idiot.

“Golly, smart photographer on Reddit, you’re right!”

Something similar happened to me lots of years ago, and it was discouraging enough that I essentially stopped posting items, or commenting on them, on any shared web sites: I asked if the group knew of a good way to remove blue haze from an image shot from Muley Point in Utah. No one gave me an answer, but at least a couple of these stewards of photography fellowship made sure to tell me that my image was “horribly overexposed.”

Here’s the thing about that: I didn’t ask for your opinion of the photo or the exposure, and telling me you thought it was bad for some reason doesn’t help anyone.

Also, don’t bother telling these guys what they are getting wrong. They are all about being right no matter how wrong they are. Follow this link (here) to read a piece of photographic truth that no one will admit is right.

Don’t get me wrong. Photograph isn’t the end of it. It extends deep into many male-dominated activities. Amateur radio is full of know-it-alls who are happy to tell you how little you know about antennas, or how the thing you want to do is stupid and impossible. It extends to cars and airplanes and power tools and stereo systems and sports.

Sorry for the rant – I should know better than to keep reading threads like that.

Weather comes in fits and starts in Oklahoma. Sometimes we face drought. Other times, crippling heat. Winter can bring hot, dry wildfire conditions, or it can crush us with single-digit cold.

This spring, Oklahoma was among the states in the south that experienced particularly severe weather, including a tornado that did serious damage to a town where I once lived and worked, Shawnee.

With the sky turbulent and active, it was inviting me to try to photograph it. Lightning was particularly prevalent on April 19 and May 11. On both occasions, I decided to make numerous frames of the sky, and blend them together from Adobe Photoshop layers. This idea was extra-appealing since my work laptop computer was recently upgraded, and included the continuously-updated version of all of Adobe’s editing products.

Lately we in the photography community have seen an uptick in articles in the photography press about AI – artificial intelligence – and the idea that it endangers the authenticity of photography.

When talking to some of my favorite photographers, I heard, not at all surprisingly, that we believe our own work isn’t immediately or directly threatened by this trend.

One question that comes to my mind early in these conversations is, “Why would you want to create artificial images?” The answer is discouragingly obvious: money. Nobody hires coders and puts them in front of sophisticated computers out of the goodness or their hearts, or even really out of curiosity. They just want to make money.

Photographers have to make a living too, of course.

One of my photographer friends in Tulsa has been trending toward the use of film and very old cameras as a way of reinforcing the idea that his work is authentic.

Another photographer, a friend here in town, was just recently pondering her point of view, and was asking herself some very relevant, very insightful questions, such as, “Do these photos really show who my client is, or just who I think she is?”

It’s a fine line, and one that many photographers can lose sight of as they try more and more to show off their skills, and try less and less to give the client, or in my case the public, what they need and have paid for.

Finally, of course, are the bigger-picture issues (pun intended) – is fake photography taking the place of and destroying real, authentic photography, photojournalism, and even the truth? Fake news, fake images, fake societies – what can we do to remain authentic?

Editor’s note: after running in my own newspaper, this item was picked up by Yahoo! News.

There was a fair amount of concern and consternation this week about a photographer who had re-staged a moment in a news coverage situation.

The incident in question happened at an anti-mask protest in January. The photographer is accused of staging a photograph of a child throwing a mask into a smoldering trash can where protesters had burned their own masks.

Oddly, much of the time, manipulating a photo of a moment fails to improve on the real image or session.

So, have I ever manipulated a news photo? By the standard of the National Press Photographers Association’s Code of Ethics, no.

But.

Often my own presence and the presence of other journalists directly affects the event. In a strictly feature situation, people are tempted to pose for me. Sometimes they’ll tell their children to pose for me. That’s fine, but it does interrupt the moment, and changes the image from a photo of what’s going on to a photo of people posing for a photo.

But in a straight news situation, that is less likely. Firefighters aren’t likely to stop rolling up their hoses to pose for me. Police aren’t likely to grin at me when they’re stringing crime-scene tape.

But I have noticed a tendency in my journalistic environment for people who know me, and know what I’m doing, to move out of the way without my asking them to. I know they’re just trying to help, but sometimes that can be frustrating, especially when I am shooting with a very wide angle lens and am using people in the foreground to express that near-far relationship that can help lead the reader/viewer into the image.

But then, the water of photojournalism can get a little muddy: what if I move one direction or another to emphasize the smoke at a wildfire? What if I choose a super-telephoto to show how far traffic backed up at a car crash? What if I use a slow shutter speed to express motion?

To some degree, in those ways and more, every photograph we make has some element of manipulation.