The great disruption
08/03/09 17:44 Filed in: Personal
2008 is a true watershed year. The economy came to a halt and money disappeared in unbelievable amounts. Most experts assure us that this is a temporary disruption in our never-ending quest for more products, more change, more growth. They are wrong. We will have to settle for a lower level of prosperity and our habit of throwing away any product we do not want and buy a new one is definitely over.
If you look at the current explosion of digital cameras that are now on sale and the incessant mantra of magazines and web discussion groups for even more features and more power and more sensor sizes and amounts of pixels that demand more powerful computers with more potent programs and larger printers, we have to ask ourselves: is this the way to create great photography and preserve the wealth of nature? Do we really have to buy a new camera every two years?
In the golden era of mechanical cameras, you bought the camera you wanted and needed and used the camera for a decade or even longer. Some world famous photographers used their camera for twenty and more years. When the camera broke, they did something extremely unusual these days: they had it repaired!
The growth model we have developed in the last twenty years is unsustainable and the consumer attitudes that we had to adopt to accommodate ourselves to this culture are a thing of the past.
Perhaps we hold on to our Nikon D3x and Canon 5D Mr II and Canon G10 and Leica M8 for a longer period, stop with photoshopping our image files, print on A4 as a maximum size and even, my goodness, pick up our M7 and M6 and start using film in stead of buying more new cameras.
I am certainly not pleading for a buyer strike. In the old days, you bought an M3 or a Nikon F or Canon F1 for a lifetime of use, not for two years because then a new model will be announced and that is of course must be bought too.
I am pleading for a sensible approach of product selection: buy whet you really need for the foreseeable future and stick with this.Such an attitude will imply that less products are being sold and prices will go up.
In reality we have no choice: we cannot continue to act as if growth is the only option in life.
Perhaps we need to rediscover the art of balance and relaxation.
If you look at the current explosion of digital cameras that are now on sale and the incessant mantra of magazines and web discussion groups for even more features and more power and more sensor sizes and amounts of pixels that demand more powerful computers with more potent programs and larger printers, we have to ask ourselves: is this the way to create great photography and preserve the wealth of nature? Do we really have to buy a new camera every two years?
In the golden era of mechanical cameras, you bought the camera you wanted and needed and used the camera for a decade or even longer. Some world famous photographers used their camera for twenty and more years. When the camera broke, they did something extremely unusual these days: they had it repaired!
The growth model we have developed in the last twenty years is unsustainable and the consumer attitudes that we had to adopt to accommodate ourselves to this culture are a thing of the past.
Perhaps we hold on to our Nikon D3x and Canon 5D Mr II and Canon G10 and Leica M8 for a longer period, stop with photoshopping our image files, print on A4 as a maximum size and even, my goodness, pick up our M7 and M6 and start using film in stead of buying more new cameras.
I am certainly not pleading for a buyer strike. In the old days, you bought an M3 or a Nikon F or Canon F1 for a lifetime of use, not for two years because then a new model will be announced and that is of course must be bought too.
I am pleading for a sensible approach of product selection: buy whet you really need for the foreseeable future and stick with this.Such an attitude will imply that less products are being sold and prices will go up.
In reality we have no choice: we cannot continue to act as if growth is the only option in life.
Perhaps we need to rediscover the art of balance and relaxation.