Photographers, Instagrammers: Stop Being So Selfish and Disrespectful
petapixel.com
petapixel.com
Most photographers were Okay and respected the rules, but some some just refused and couldn't handle being called out. For example one rule was do not get in train cabs, unless by prior arrangement - which involved doing a safety briefing etc. Still some photographers just did their own thing. Some would jump on to the footplates of in service steam locomotives to get their shot, that was dangerous but they didn't care. I was driving a diesel railcar and had a passenger bang on the cab door so he could take shots from within the cab. He kept banging for about 10 minutes until we got back to the station and was then had a go at me for refusing him access.
Another strict rule was no tripods on the platforms. It was dangerous as they created a tripping hazard and just ruined the atmosphere for other visitors. But come a sunny day or special event the forest of tripods would be out in force.
And the worst of all was the ones who would walk off the end of platforms and setup alongside the railway line. Most wouldn't even bother to wear a hi-viz vest either. Completely dangerous, but they didn't care they just wanted their special shot.
These weren't just our rules, many were in place because of laws and insurance requirements. We didn't want accidents, nor did we want a few visitors to ruin the atmosphere for others. But when we called called out such people we often got abuse, which would then be followed up by long rants about how unaccommodating we were in various photography and railway forums.
The thing is we would allow photographers to access cabs, use tripods and go alongside the line - so long as they arranged it with us first. And during special events we would often have an hour set aside specifically for photographers to go to town. But for some that wasn't enough.
For a lot of heritage railways in the UK and Ireland the misbehavior of some photographers has got so bad they have a blanket ban on cameras with remediable lenses.
This is about mutual respect: if anyone takes the time and effort to open a place for people with cameras, if what you want disrupts their usual flow, the least you should do is ask for permission.
I was talking to a bus driver recently who said someone had lost their card and demanded rudely the driver let him on anyway. The driver said words to the effect of, please be polite and I will. The guy said he wasn't going to be polite. So he didn't get his ride.
I don't get it either.
Photographers are mostly allowed to take photos of people in the street, but some of them can be pretty obnoxious about it.
I haven't done much research, but Bruce Gilden strikes me someone who is a pioneer of (NYC) street photography. He has been doing it for a long time and doesn't seem like a photo hipster. Maybe he was considered one when he started out. The fact he wears photography attire is probably disarming in a way. If it was someone trying to blend in then it might be different. The photos from the video are not derpy photos as my wife likes to describe my portraits of hers so he is trying to show an interesting side of life. I'm sure a lot of pictures don't meet his standards.
Within photo groups in my city, I see a lot of people into street photography because it's the cool aesthetic that matches with their urban lifestyle. It's cool to be into photography, so they got a digital rangefinder and jumped into it without thinking about the art or technique. They form a cargo cult, but often they get broken from it upon discovery that there is more to photography that they are missing. The obnoxious instragrammers are not likely to have the same outcome.
Wildlife photographers don't need the animals' permission. Trees and mountains don't care about the people making landscapes. Buildings don't care about people capturing architecture. People sitting for a professional studio portrait sign model releases up front. Journalists generally only care about not getting in emergency services' way.
But us street folk? We're in that odd zone where we need our subjects to both give permission (either implicitly or explicitly) and act natural. Many can't manage that balance. They either start doing urban architecture with silhouetted people and pretend that it's street (which I am frequently guilty of), or they go full-scale Bruce-Asshole-Gilden and rampage their way into people's faces.
Well, when the elite are all shining exemplars of "fuck you, I got mine" with demonstrably no consequences for those actions, and TV is full of reality shows pushing the same message, people (especially the young) will pick up on that.
At a personal level I found them very decent and considerate, deeply and genuinely so. The problem in the city of scarfing up too much money seemed to me to be down to them just not understanding how much it hurt other people. They were born, if not wealthy then certainly nowhere near poor, so never understood what the stress of not knowing you can pay the rent does to you. I felt it to be an ignorance problem not an attitude problem.
Though YMMV as americans say.
[0] which mostly they didn't deserve. They were no more competent than the average man on the street and in fact considerably less so in some ways as they'd been 'poisoned' with abundant corporate money - they didn't understand you can get a lot done with moderate cash; they expected to throw cash at everything. It produced a very inefficient way of working, exactly the opposite of what the capitalist culture should have done. It made them stupid. It made it an incredibly frustrating place to work and I had to hand in my notice.
I read somewhere that the designer of the original ARM cpu said his boss had given him 2 great gifts, no money and no staff. These were not gifts the square mil hands around easily.
Edit: sorry, I realised how far I've wandered off-topic. Happy to delete if you wish.
At these point I feel compelled to remember that quote from Socrates about how the kids are all rude and disrespectful these days. So maybe nothing ever changes and we're just getting old and grumpy.
But your comment definitely rings true. It's something hard to pin down but I notice it all the time.
It's this. Sorry to break it to you. People also change their behavior to you based on your age. As a single example, as you age and slow down, younger, faster folks will be more frequently annoyed with having to dodge past you on the sidewalk, which will predispose them to be more rude around you in general. It's a whole complicated host of things, and as you say, it's been true since the beginning of time.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-peo...
> “We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.” - 1925
I guess I have my answer.
However... I do think in a situation such as this it’s a missed commercial opportunity.
If I managed a highly “Instagrammable” private location I’d aggressively enforce good conduct and at the same time have paid access to alternative times for photographers.
You want to be a selfish dick and ruin the common good so you extract more value for yourself? Pay for it.
That "aggressively enforce good conduct" is key. There are dozens, hundreds of people showing up at the same time at some of these places.
People here in the US can be obnoxious at times, but I don't generally see the level of abuse that I've seen in NI. It's horrible that people even take this stuff online.
https://www.paulreiffer.com/2019/07/photographers-instagramm...
All site content © Paul Reiffer 2019 and may not be used without permission
And Petapixel's post credits him, and includes in the end:
About the author: (...) This article was also published here [link to author's blog].
So, I assume it has been authorized by the author? Does he prefer to have a link to his own blog directly?
I don't see why one wouldn't want to link the source and at the same time support the writer directly instead of hoping a fraction of the readers will find and follow the links in the footnotes on Petapixel.
Isn't that between the author and Petapixel? The author seems to have granted permission to reproduce his work there.
I wasn't the one who downvoted your comment but in this particular case I disagree. I wouldn't call this "blog spam". The petapixel post is more like the author strategically choosing syndication[1].
As a reader of articles, I find the petalpixel url more relevant than the photographer's own website. After I'm done reading the 1 article, I can see more "trending" articles on the righthand side to read more.
In contrast, the photographer's website is less relevant because I'm not interested in buying prints that cost $1100 to $13000 USD or contacting him to book luxury expeditions.
Just wanted to provide a different perspective and why I think the Petapixel url is more appropriate for the HN audience. In fact, sending a potential "HN hug of death" directly to the author's website with virtually no one "adding to shopping cart" while using up his hosting bandwidth seems to be the opposite of supporting the photographer.
I suspect the author has decided to republish it for SEO as there is a follow link back to their site.
For intrigue:
petapixel.com domain authority is 90
www.paulreiffer.com domain authority is 48
I know very little about anything, but what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience you should do it."
- Bo Burnham, monologue from the special 'Make happy'.
I'm lucky enough to have been to some of those places in the past (Wanaka, Angkor) and while there were some crowds, it wasn't anything like depicted in the article.
It's the essential conundrum of tourism. The more people that go to a place, the more they ruin what made the place special in the first place.
A few weeks ago, we had a friend from the US visiting, and we decided to take him there. We hadn't been there in about 10 years now, and it was insanely busy even though it was just a random Wednesday. The road from the town of Lake Louise up to the actual lake was a traffic jam the entire way (about 5km), and there was no parking at all anywhere near the lake or in the town. I ended up having to drop my wife and our friend off at the top and drive back down, then down the highway for almost 10 minutes to the "overflow lot" to find anywhere to park (and it was almost totally full too, even though it's huge).
We've talked to some people about it since, and apparently that's just how busy it is all the time now. The amount of over-tourism to some of these Instagram-famous places is getting ridiculous, and (like it goes over in the article) they're just really not able to handle it and it turns into a huge mess of people behaving selfishly because once they're there, they're not leaving without the photos they want.
Shame that it's usually swamped but it makes sense, it's a beautiful area. Maybe try again in the winter?
Weeell...technically it is. (At least it's not far off.) But sometimes "get off my lawn" is justified.
I wonder how they'd feel if tables were turned - farmers all photographing young people on their laptops in cafes etc.
If you go to China, Chinese tourists will want to take pictures of you (assuming you're white). And they really like taking pictures of white kids.
It's kind of funny, but I've never seen anyone react by thinking the Chinese are all selfish jerks. That just wouldn't make sense.
How would you feel if hoards of Chinese people came over to photograph you in your native environment, say, stuck in traffic on your commute, or late to drop your kids off at school, or while they're standing in your front garden while you're up a ladder trying to clear the guttering?
Perhaps you'd tire of that more quickly?
I think the problem in this subthread started when jwmoz decided the "equivalent" of tourists coming to your fields, trampling your crops, and cutting and taking bunches of produce for themselves was tourists coming to a Starbucks and taking pictures.
It is less about a global power imbalance and more about a situational one.
Which is exactly what happens in many countries. In the Netherlands this is a common (and recent) issue with Chinese tourists visiting folkloric villages that have normal people not living there who are not part of the tourism industry as well — like picturesque canal-strewn Giethoorn.
Since westerners were a rare sight in many of the villages I visited, my friends and I found ourselves constantly being photographed, with the local teens and even older adults alike all posing in selfies with us in the background. I’d say we were photographed roughly 20-30 times per day, for the the month we were there. I’m not kidding.
I’m sure we looked like clowns to them with our height and big noses. I found it hilarious and am glad I brought some amusement to these folks.
Side note: I see every person on this thread thinks they aren’t part of the problem. It’s the other people of course! Tourists complaining about other tourists has a real irony to it. Rich people getting mad they have to share the worlds treasures with a growing population of other rich people. Boo boo. A certain percentage of the population is always going to be assholes, whether they live in a place or are just visiting. Instagram isn’t the root cause to why people suck, this too shall pass.
That's even more depressing (if true) than this abomination of "social networks" that we are seeing right now.
But still, even if your point might be true, we should stop giving people easy ways to be degenerates. There should be repercussions or something, but good luck codifying it into a law :)
It's a difficult problem.
You don't always need laws to stop bad behavior. Influential social shame and scorn are often just as effective.
We're literally talking about behavioural modification here. FB + INSTA may not make people assholes, but they certainly reward certain classes of asshole behaviour.
They're not unique in that, but other asshole-promoting loop systems have been around far longer, so we tend to assume they're how things are rather than questioning them.
Which is why "This too shall pass" may not be a valid assumption.
It depends on what problem you're referring to. People going onto private property and damaging locations are a special kind of asshole. They're not regular tourists.
I wondered if we could get a contest running: for every "influencer" picture, see who can find the most unflattering backstage picture for that set. Maybe once people realized that behind each "young and carefree" photo there's a professional photographer, lights, a mobile wardrobe, a ladder, and hundreds of people doing the same, then the madness would stop.
But then I realised that I just re-invented the paparazzi. And if they haven't changed people's perception of Hollywood glamour, neither will this plan.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mariahoxley/whys-she-so-small
Of course a lot of "tourist attractions" are like that day-in, day-out.
easy, they'd say "thanks! Follow and subscribe!!"
Most of the lavender grown there is used to produce the lavender infused tourist junk you can find all over that area. It's literally the primary reason for that farm to be farming the stuff. So, having the odd tourist come along and taking some photos is maybe a necessary evil.
Tourists misbehaving and spoiling things has been a thing for as long as tourism has been a thing. The only thing that is worse is locals destroying their environment to draw in yet more tourists and squeeze every drop of revenue from them. Many idyllic places have long turned into package tourism hell with lots of cheap constructions, masses of tourists getting drunk and stuffing their face with junk food and nothing authentic whatsoever anywhere in sight. Arles where Van Gogh used to hang out is a good example.
It sure is, but modern tech greatly increased the phenomenon. Old tech made photography way less interesting for narcissistic people. It was hard, expensive, took time to develop, you most likely had no audience if you weren't a professional. Now you can take a snapshit on your budget dslr, send it via bluetooth to your ipad, edit it right there and put it on instagram for free, some even get paid if they include a watch or a pair of shoe in the pic...
Sure in the bunch you have a few artistic people, but most of it is the same exact picture of the same exact thing. All of it for imaginary internet points. We don't have to watch black mirror anymore we're living in a lame and slow version of it already. Comparing Van Gogh to that is a bit of a stretch.
There are only so many interesting photos of the Mona Lisa. But there are an infinite number of interesting photos of people maniacally taking photos of the Mona Lisa. If you're lucky, you might snap a pic of an instagrammer falling off a cliff, or getting hit by a truck.
This photo didn't quite capture the full effect, but at the time I was shocked how many people were facing away from the painting.
Travel and social media is just an extension of "keeping up with the Jones's" but on a personal identity level- only at the cost of whatever destruction you are willing to put our planet through, be it that new camera you bought, or the jet fuel you paid to burn.
I couldn't help but feel guilty on the way to my last international trip- the homeless do less damage to the planet than I do.
It didn't help that for several years (though it has thankfully tapered off) there was a constant stream of "lifestyle" articles proclaiming that mass tourism "experiences" to capture some photo-totem were the scientifically confirmed path to happiness.
Is it a surprise then that more and more people want to travel in order to signal that they aren't an uncultured, passport-less hillbilly? The key thing to note here is that someone who does not have any regard for their environment and other people will be the same whether they're in Kansas or in Paris. Often, they'll be even worse, since it's not home that they're trashing up.
"I just want to see the world" I hear, a yearning for an experience that, when pursued, might temporarily stifle midlife crises but ruins marriages just as often. I feel so deeply sad for people who don't realize that everything they need is in front of them.
In the beginning it was about exploration and at the end it was about discovering my priorities in life.
The genesis of the trip came about when I started talking to someone at a language school about taking language classes. He started asking me why, then said, "just go there. You'll never get a better chance than when you're young."
He was 100% right.
Here in Iceland(1), shops downtown are regularly being replaced by copies of the same gift shop you’ll find everywhere in the world, and there is active discussion about coming up with “tourist-friendly” English names for landmarks because the Icelandic ones that have been used for hundreds of years aren’t enticing enough.
The tourism industry has figured out how to give people a good show, but it’s ultimately a shallow experience. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing: like everything else, travel needs welcoming, entry-level experiences. The trouble comes when it gets so prevalent that it starts to warp and destroy the local culture in order to sell more spectacle.
(1) Full disclosure: I first came here as a tourist, and would never have moved here without that initial exposure, so I can’t completely comdemn the tourism industry.
Kind of like software development these days, on the web in particular - the "entry-level experience" makes most money, so over time it starts to dominate and push out everything else.
Sure there are people who seem to travel with the intent impress people, but traveling is a character-building in a way that everyone should experience. Its not the kind of spirit-quest that some people make it out to be, but it will give you interesting stuff to think out for years.
Get a passport, save $5-10k and go slumming in Europe for 6 months. Backpack for clothes. Laptop. Camera. Condoms. If you decide you don't like it in three-four weeks, come back. Otherwise spend time there stretching your money as long as you can until your budget runs out.
Sure, traveling just to achieve certain bragging rights is superficial and silly, but that doesn't mean travel itself isn't valuable. Similarly, reading books just to say you've read the most or the hardest is silly, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read.
Traveling allows you to viscerally see how people live and value things differently from you. There is much to be gained from it if you do it for the right reasons.
Actually living in a different place will certainly do that, but “travel” almost never will.
Take one extreme case: a typical college grad doing a euro-trip to 10 countries in 14 days. They will certainly not be able to experience those cultures deeply, but compare that person to someone who never went to Europe, never saw their respect for the past, train travel, food cultures, and the high value they place on vacation.
Even consider those young travelers that mostly stay within the confines of their hostel and their group activities, or in a national bar where things appear familiar and comfortable: they are still better off than if they just stayed home and had not seen any of it.
Certainly, 10 days of travel is not much, but it's a lot more than 0 days. For some, those 10 days may be truly meaningful and eye-opening, for others, a familiar party with different scenery. Traveling is generally uncomfortable and different, and the experience can add something to even the most shallow traveler.
(caveat: It happens, although uncommon, that travel can be a detriment. Particularly, when someone goes to a country that is poorer than theirs, and attributes their lack of development to some genetic or racist defect. While this is possible, I do think it's exceedingly rare. When one sees how other people live up close, it's natural to look for the patterns and similarities rather than come up with differences.)
She had my girlfriend and I stay at her home in a little town Nagold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagold
We stayed with their family for a week, experiencing the smaller town life, hiking in the black forest and going to the market for fresh bread every morning.
We then rented a vehicle and traveled around the Autobahn visiting many major cities and either staying at a hostel ($20 a night per person plus an amazing breakfast included!), or with a mutual friend of her's whom she had met in college.
There are only a few Universities in Germany so she knew someone is almost all the major cities we stayed at and it was nice to converse with them in their home, trade stories and experience the night life as a local would.
We did go to a few tourist areas which were neat to experience, however most of the fun did come from 'off the beaten path' where you got to interact with locals and see more of the slower, simple life.
One thing that I found astonishing is the amount you can converse/communicate with someone even if you don't speak their language. Granted most people in Germany can understand English well, but with the few broken phrases I learned before going I was able to do quite well when our translator (my friend from high school) would not be with us sometimes.
I much would rather do this, go to one specific country rather than go to 14 countries in 10 days.
Haven't traveled since as work/school/family is now my priority but doing at least one travel to get out of your comfort zone is a good experience I think everyone should get to experience once (if they want to).
But there are many forms of travel. For me, it is and forever will be only backpacking-ish style. Done for example 6 months in India in very remote places. When you come back from such a visit, you are not really the same person inside that left. Or at least I can't imagine not being changed by all the positive and also negative things experienced. 1 week feels like 3 there, 1 month more like 5 years, and after 3 the idea of my life back was just a distant memory of a dream I once had. You can't tell properly others about those 1000s of small and big adventures, they wouldn't understand most of the appeal. Only those with similar experiences would. Photos or videos, even done with full frame equipment, tell only small part of the story.
And these instagrammers/'influencers' (that's a too pretty name for what it usually is, if they travel around like that they are rather 'influenced') ? Well they are for people with sheepish mentality. I would have to have utterly bland life to be interested in some John Doe's life, where he made this or that selfie and consistently follow them. I guess I am too old and experienced for Instagram bandwagon. With all the travel photo I do, I would anyway end up as one of those 'influencers' (at least that's what people tell me when they see my photos and the amount I create)
Yes, they also have tours to help you 'experience' the life of a local, like going through a favela in Rio. Anedoctal, but from what I've seen it can be really offensive to people on those places, because it works pretty much like a safari.
The German film-critic Siegfried Kracauer wrote a very interesting essay against tourism as a mass phenomenon in the 1930s or so, just as the phenomenon was about to be born. Really interesting piece, you can find it in an essays book called "The Mass Ornament", and the book itself can be read in here [1] (warning, big PDF)
[1] https://monoskop.org/images/0/0f/Kracauer_Siegfried_The_Mass...
We are definitely getting to the point where since everyone is doing it, it's not special anymore.
Much like a bachelor's degree used to be something sought by companies. But now, they are considered the baseline.
It's really just another branch of the same kind of materialism.
The mating signal thing is crazy too. I recently dabbled in dating apps (hopefully, never again). It seems virtually every woman on there is obsessed with travel (has "wanderlust", or wants to visit "30 countries before 30", or "couldn't live without my passport", along with a bunch of photos of them posing in front of familiar stock-photo tourist sites).
It's almost always like this: an obsession with travel itself, rather than a passion for a particular culture or region or language or activity that requires travel. (Which might not really be any better, but I'd identify with it a lot more easily).
What's driving this? Is it covert (or subconscious) signalling that they want a mate with the resources to fund this lifestyle? Or simply a feeling that this is expected of them to seem fun and interesting?
As you said, not nearly enough has been written. I wish a great writer with the requisite knowledge of culture and psychology would dive into this.
If you really want to experience something, don't take any pictures. Just be there. After a while you might not have vivid memories of everything you saw, but you'll still be able to recall the feeling of being there. Talk to other people about it face to face, describe what you felt and what it was like to be there.
I have no photos of a trip my family took to some lake house in Indiana when it was young. I couldn't tell you what the place looked like, but I can still feel the calm and relaxation of being there decades later.
I have no photos of a waterfall I visited with my wife in Grand Teton National Park, but I can still feel the cool air and the mist in the air. Couldn't tell you what it looked like, but I have what matters. And I didn't have to show it to anyone.
The first time I encountered the word was in 1980, reading a 1969 comic book containing the phrase "The Wanderlust begins to rise in my bosom!" Phineas T. Phreak was speaking, and I think he ended up going to Disneyland with two of his friends (with hilarious results).
What are you talking about? Travel is status seeking and status displaying. It showed up after WWII.
"I travel" is a polite way of saying "I am rich enough to travel". "I like going to places, seeing new things, meeting the locals and blah blah blah" is a polite way of saying "I'm rich enough to be able to take off work time for going to new places, seeing seeings, meeting the locals and blaj blah blah"
* Our popular areas are completely overrun during tourist season - I personally think not much fun for tourists or locals (unless a crowd is good e.g. party zones)
* As a local, I can usually find something way better when I travel in NZ that isn't overrun by tourists (e.g. from article, that one lavender farm in France is overrun, but I bet there are plenty nearby that are not).
* I personally love the vibe of the high tourist areas. Generally having tourists is good for nightlife, great for meeting other cultures, and tourists create heaps of economic opportunities (very often in places that would struggle otherwise).
* When travelling overseas, I skip anything "must see" that is in a guide or otherwise recommended (unless you want a tickbox or it is totally off-season). I go to small towns that are in non-tourist areas, and find my own awesome shit.
* When travelling, try to meet locals in a low-density tourist area. You get to see the real country. In reverse, I try to be super welcoming to travellers I meet (I have no problem giving a hitchhiker a room in my home if they pass my sniff test).
* NZ isn't a big country, but there is a huge amount of amazing places to visit everywhere, if you have your own transport and more than a few weeks to travel.
* Try to avoid staying in tourist high density areas. Avoid the easy tourist transport means, avoid the tourist backpackers or hotels.
* Yes, tourists often leave a mess (NZ has a real problem with tourists travelling by vehicle shitting everywhere), but the benefits of tourists really outweigh the downsides IMHO
* I would love NZ to introduce a visa fee per travelling day - that pays for cleaning and pays for free entry to high traffic tourist destinations. We should be striving to attract the high value tourist, and not nickel and dime them once they are here. Tourism can be a Veblen good.
Summary: there are places that are tourist destinations, but there are heaps of places that tourists don't go to that are incredible.
These things are kind of like Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian: famous for being famous, not for any actual intrinsic qualities they may have.
There are exceptions. For example Venice is VERY touristic, but also for good reasons IMHO.
I was actually in Wanaka last December, and yeah, it's a funny looking tree, but to go out of your way for it? Yeh nah. There were many more memorable/fun aspects of our Wanaka outing.
— wearing wedding dresses into the Sacré Cœur and marching past all the no-photo signs to the altar for a fake I-got-married-here pic
— posing unnaturally with rapid-change outfits and accessories in the middle of street traffic on the Pont d’Iéna facing the Eiffel Tower and at l’Arc de Triomphe, ignoring all the honks and drivers and pedestrians alike yelling at them, until a police car stopped and turned on its sirens
— couples dragging strollers with infants and toddlers up to the Mona Lisa to take selfies
— throngs elbowing for position to take a selfie in front of a piece of art—and then moving on without even spending a single moment contemplating or appreciating the artwork
We saw a dozen or more such scenes every day. It was awful.
I was hiking to a remote castle recently, 30 min drive + mud roads remote, I got there and saw a parked car (there is no parking spots btw), immediately thought "eh, you got to be lazy to come here by car, half the fun is the walk". Five min later I stumbled upon a couple in suit/wedding dress and two photographers, I think I physically cringed at the sight.
I can't even imagine what Maroon Bells is like during high season.
I sense a market for a consulting firm that specializes in managing photoshoots at locations like the one in the post explicitly for Instagram.
And here is the end result. This account basically takes Instagram photos of the exact same location/style and groups them together. It’s kind of mind blowing!
Now, after the proliferation of cheap DSLRs I now think photography is the most obnoxious thing ever. Now ever asshole imagines themselves as a photographer and acts like a dick to get that one picture. I was out with a wannabe photographer friend and watched her climb over a safety barrier and dangerously close to the edge of a cliff in order to take a photo. I was shocked.
This one made me so sad: https://www.instagram.com/publiclandshateyou/p/Bu_qnY7hjhQ/?...
Mirrorless cameras are the rage nowadays.
And the worst part is: “my $relative has a DSLR and he’d shoot for free, do it for free and you’ll get exposure”.
Sigh.
But yeah, I get your point.. its super annoying when people do those things or when they say "you must have a nice camera" instead of complimenting your skills.
Before smartphones were a thing, I used to have a side-gig as semi-professional photographer for metal concerts. Semi-professional means in this case, I had an official accreditation for the venue and the band, experience, equipment and most importantly, professional courtesy an respect, but was working for a not-for-profit heavy metal magazine that just had to cover server costs - all volunteers who happen to be really into the music and wanted to share that and support artists, big and small.
There are some very easy ground rules: You are in the photo pit for the first (usually) 3 songs, no flash, not getting in the way of other photographers, and not disturbing the performance or audience.
This worked out great - as few people were able to capture the concerts, people actually appreciated our work, both in the magazine I wrote for as well as on my personal photography blog. It's a great way to re-live some moments of a great performance, for free.
I stopped doing that after more and more kids with smartphones spent entire concerts on their phones, trying to get front-row selfies, crowd-surfing for the purpose of their friends snapping a picture, kids who somehow got into the pit with a phone and the flash on full power, and of course unprofessional "influencers" who only cared about getting a shot for their Instagram page and their own self-image and brand, not for the reasons I highlighted in the first paragraph.
I tried to temper my annoyance by reminding myself that they have just as much right to be there as I do - these are public places after all. What stood out though is the behavior described in this article, which is the complete focus on themselves and no awareness or concern for the location or the people around them who might also want to take a picture - or even just enjoy the place they’re visiting. I didn’t see anything like the destruction and theft described in this article, but that’s likely just because of the nature of the places I visited (lots of armed guards).
I worry that we’re allowing (and reinforcing) some horrible behaviors, and wonder what kind of people they will grow up to be. Narcissism is a harsh label, but I don’t have a better one.
People have always taken pictures around the world. But recently travel is becoming a lot cheaper, a lot safer, developing countries are developing so they are easier to get to, its easier to get to far corners of the world, chinese are traveling more, americans are pushing off buying homes and having kids until later in life leaving them free to travel. The world is just more populated now too.
The slides he took were for his own amusement, and the family’s, just like most other people’s photos. They weren’t shared instantly with the world. That was very much a professional’s conceit.
Now, everyone with a phone has a camera that’s very high resolution and usually internet-connected. The cameras keep getting better (for no good reason that I can tell) while the phone itself remains relatively unchanged. Sure, it can run more apps, so it’s now pretty much a personal computer that incidentally includes a phone,, but because we feel the need to be always connected, we’ve always got a camera.
Consequently, everyone feels the need to overshare every moment of their life, as if they will somehow become important, or that we’ll magically care. It’s too cheap and it’s too easy to spam the world with the beautiful moments that, incidentally, are just like everyone else’s beautiful moments.
My grandfather had a probably almost-unique collection of all 250-plus courthouses of Texas at the time, without competing with anyone to get them, just because he thought it was a neat idea. Now, there are probably hundreds of that collection, produced by ridulously competitive amateurs who want to be Instagram-famous.
In the past photos were mainly for your own use and you'd talk to people about your trip. Now photos are how people tell each other about what they're doing and where they are. As social media has become competitive for many people that compounds the effect.
When I was travelling around SE Asia twenty years ago with a film SLR I was a novelty. At a viewpoint most tourists would take one photo with a point and shoot and I'd take perhaps 2 or 3. The rest of the time was spent looking & exploring.
You hit on a lot of them: Reduced cost of travel is certainly one. And, as you say, young professional couples are more likely to be sans children for at least a period.
The somewhat related popularity of some urban areas probably also fuels the experience over stuff meme. If you live in a small Brooklyn apartment, your cost of living may be high but you also aren’t going to accumulate a lot of possessions because you’d have nowhere to put them.
For tourism, air travel becoming cheaper and the mobile Internet becoming ubiquitous (mainly for booking and review sites/apps) are much more important.
It used to be that you might find a nice secluded place because a family member or friend went there and told you about it or showed you by sending you a physical photo in the mail or showing you a photo album. The exposure might be counted in the tens. It would then be a substantial financial endeavour to go visit that place.
Today, all it takes is one "influencer" to find something new and within a week it's seen by tens of thousands to millions of people, many of whom can afford to visit it if they wish.
I think it's already trending that way, but the effects are slow to arrival.
Critical point. Only when people start to think about this topic, they'll realize that shaming was invented for a reason, and a great reason: it works. It kept order into civilizations for millennia.
Really fuck social order and fuck social shaming - may they die and stay dead and buried and we have to deal with petty problems instead of this bullshit.
I don't think it's going to go away any more than things like magazines or travel shows are going to go away. At best, some subset of the "influencers" will find something else to signal about.
Is it "new" when literally thousands of people took the same pic from the same angle ? It's herd mentality 101 if you ask me
1) Why doesn't the farmer call the police on them for trespassing? And post clear warning signs explaining the penalties... as farmers and other people with large areas of private property have been doing forever
2) And/or make money off it -- charge $$$ for exclusive use of the field for 30 min, do your photoshoot, trample all the lavender you need because you'll be paying top dollar for it
Farmers deal with all sorts of pests threatening their crops, this is just one more. And they're businesspeople. I'm certainly not defending people's bad behavior, but this situation in particular seems pretty manageable.
That pretty much sums up 2/3 of our society. Dealing with stupidity of the masses will be one of the bigger challenges of the future.
It's ironic that the author is defending the rights of kayakers to do what they enjoy in the lake, while simultaneously berating photographers and "instagrammers" for "ruining the view for others" with their mere presence.
The article does raise many good points. Fences, property-rights, and rules should be respected. But much of the article comes across as paternalistic virtue signaling. Anyone's choice of hobbies or livelihood can be psychoanalyzed as being selfish or narcissistic or parasitic. The author loves to shame instagrammers for being driven by "likes" and "attention", and I'm sure someone else out there would love to shame the author for profiting off of nature instead of toiling as an unknown environmental activist. Unless you're a psychologist or mental health professional, perhaps we should all just let others enjoy life in any way they want, without feeling the need to judge and condescend to them.
> I’ve seen photographers edge further and further into the water – ruining the view for others...
> For instagrammers, and wannabe “influencers” – learn that there are people on the planet who might not be interested in YOU. They might want to see the view without you in it. They might even want to just sit and enjoy a scene without a camera (shock!). While it’s easy to get wrapped up in this stuff online, they have every right (or maybe even more) to enjoy a place without it being ruined by your need to be “liked” by people you’ll never meet.
It sure sounds like he's berating photographers for ruining the view for others.
I understand how many can feel that way, but what if these photographers were genuinely interested in the underlying work. They did put in the effort to travel all the way to a farm to check it out. They took pictures of it in appreciation. Maybe they did not know how to properly respect the people and the place, maybe they should be taught rather than chastised.
Every child knows that you don't do whatever you want on the grounds of other people, in their gardens and homes.
Stop being jerks and just ask people politely if it's ok for them that you take a picture.
Also I don't get how they all need a picture of the same place.
In the end all they do is to deprive themselves from real happiness and the possibility to just enjoy the moment. Their POV changes in the moment they see the world through the lens of their cam and they don't even seem to get this.
I didn't mean to excuse this behavior, what they are doing is certainly not good. My point is only that in their desire to photograph, there must be some level of appreciation for it, and it would be more productive to develop that appreciation than shut everything down.
As a simple example, the next farmer that gets instagram-mobbed, rather than putting up a "No Trespassing" sign, could instead put up a sign at the front of the property asking visitors to "come to the porch, say hello, and learn about farming". Many of the people who trekked all the way out to a farm to photograph it, will likely take the extra few minutes to get a deeper understanding. The farmer will maintain (or improve) her dignity, and maybe the instagramer will learn something new.
I'm just saying there are better potential solutions than mocking and distancing yourself from a group of people, you can bring yourself closer together.
If I'd want to have so much company I'd have opened a store or museum I think.
Where I come from we really had something that was called "privacy" and "intimacy" and when we were at our place it was given to us without struggle. When I think about massive tourism, satellites in LEO and drones above our heads I see this in decline without a real choice or possibility to avoid it from coming to my little farm.
Of course I'd not want to have to put up signs or even technology to keep people, drones etc. off my grounds but I'd rather do that than being disturbed by strangers (or strange technology) every waking minute.
It's not like one person comes over on a sunny Sunday to ask me about farming but the 1000 people who have the same idea that day or the couple who want's to shoot their love scene in my yard at midnight in the moon light while I just want to fall asleep with the sounds of the crickets and not some fuck-fest.
Don't get me wrong here - I am very open minded. But I value my privacy etc. and I see it being taken away without me having a chance to decide/stop it/whatever. It's not the one person, but the mass of people who care more for their damn picture than respect for nature and people who happen to live there.
It's because they don't care about the place, they care that they've been there. This is a problem as old as photography; I remember watching tourists on my daily commute coming to the same spots, day in, day out, and shooting the exact same photos of the exact same buildings from the exact same angles. All I could think of is, "your exact photo is on Flickr already in 10 different copies, why are you doing this?!". The rise of social media (Instagram in particular) only made this worse.
I think they are harming themselves by doing this because they can't really enjoy the moment and just "be" there.
I rarely take pictures because I always think "there's already awesome pics of this on the net" and also when I'm back I don't want to overwhelm people who want to see them with a collection of "just 1000 photos of me in front of the Louvre".
Of course I'd love to have a picture of me standing in front of Taj Mahal but in the end it's not so important. The pictures people haven't seen yet are much more interesting (to me), especially places where tourists don't want to be or perspectives they shouldn't see.
E.g. the "Golden Beaches" in Bulgaria. Stay in the tourist zone and you'll have the typical beaches, hotels, bars etc. But the exciting part of the area is when you leave this "paradise" and see the massive destruction tourism, the hotel lobby etc. bring to nature and the people.
Seeing these scenes changed my mind and I realized I'd never want to do "all inclusive" at the places where all people go again.
I think people need more stable personalities so they can break out of their "hive-mind-thinking" and start sensing their environment and enjoying themselves without the constant feedback of "the hive". Behaviour like this reminds me of the Lemmings and the Borg.
I wouldn’t want a stream of Instagrammers at my door “asking for permission” to take a photo either. That’s also annoying.
Younger instagram users are much less interested in showing off perfect shots than their millennial predecessors.
...
>They’d damaged the land. They’d stolen the owner’s products. They’d ruined the fields that had been tended to with hard work for months. But even the farmer’s final attempt to put and end to it wasn’t enough – they wanted more.
Oh, can't wait the day when we are going to look back at "social media" platforms and go: "what the hell were these creatures thinking?"
I really think social media is one of the worst tools for the human psyche ever conceived. It's a net loss for sure.
It's addictive and also messes up with dopamine generation. Not to mention the vanity/envy aspect of it: people comparing to selective representation of other people. It's remarkably insane when you think about it.
Maybe it's best not to think about it :)
You'd think social media would disperse the honeypots as people spread out to emulate photos scattered over a greater number of locations, yet I gather from national park authorities etc it has the opposite effect entirely.
If we're not going to change human nature then I think that implies the opposite policy on "ticketed locations" mentioned by the OP: do charge money at honeypot spots, and reinvest it to repair the damage.
Economically, you might get "famous" enough for small brands to send you free stuff to show in the photos, in the long run they want to win the recognition lottery and get more and more famous. It's very self-referencing
Whenever I see this kinda stuff, I can't help but think of the "Ugly American" trope and how it seems like it's an insanely (and desperate to be) visible minority of the whole world now
From the section titled “The Interface Culture”:
We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and values systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals, and with anything like intellectualism, even to the point of not reading books any more, though we are literate. We seem much more comfortable with propagating those values to future generations nonverbally, through a process of being steeped in media. Apparently this actually works to some degree, for police in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV cop shows. When it’s explained to them that they are in a different country, where those rights do not exist, they become outraged. Starsky and Hutch reruns, dubbed into diverse languages, may turn out, in the long run, to be a greater force for human rights than the Declaration of Independence.
A huge, rich, nuclear-tipped culture that propagates its core values through media steepage seems like a bad idea. There is an obvious risk of running astray here. Words are the only immutable medium we have, which is why they are the vehicle of choice for extremely important concepts like the Ten Commandments, the Koran, and the Bill of Rights. Unless the messages conveyed by our media are somehow pegged to a fixed, written set of precepts, they can wander all over the place and possibly dump loads of crap into people’s minds.
Orlando used to have a military installation called McCoy Air Force Base, with long runways from which B-52s could take off and reach Cuba, or just about anywhere else, with loads of nukes. But now McCoy has been scrapped and repurposed. It has been absorbed into Orlando’s civilian airport. The long runways are being used to land 747-loads of tourists from Brazil, Italy, Russia and Japan, so that they can come to Disney World and steep in our media for a while.
To traditional cultures, especially word-based ones such as Islam, this is infinitely more threatening than the B-52s ever were.
Interesting that he wrote this prior to 9/11 (but then again, after the original WTC attack, and the African Embassy attacks).
Uh, certainly also maybe perhaps because written words were the only medium at the time? I imagine video and audio recordings will be just as important for future historians as writings have been to our time's historians
https://www.halle.be/node/61837
Each year there are more restrictions to enter the wood while the flowers are there.
One of my most jarring and bizarre memories from my time in Argentina was watching as hundreds of tourists took smiling/sultry pouting/peace sign selfies with the various graves and mausoleums.
Maine has done a pretty good job of keeping tourism in check (I would say) despite being labeled the Vacationland, but I wonder if that has to do with our state having a more "plain" natural beauty? For example, Mount Katahdin is obviously impressive for the area, but it is nowhere near as dramatic as mountains out West. Then again, perhaps the strict enforcement of Baxter's vision for a forever "wild Maine" has served us well.
Or perhaps we are fortunate to have fairly brutal winters that give us a break from those who don't snowmobile!