I wasn’t able to attend the Tuesday studio, so instead I spent the time reading Daniel Palmer’s “Mobile Media Photography” and checking the course guideline about the future assignment.
Palmer talked briefly about the evolution of mobile photography, an event he had predicted “could mark a change in social record-keeping…” but even then he didn’t thought that it’s progress could have gone so far and critical. He observed that mobile phones has changed the way photography behaves. He noted many other academic’s response to it. Such as Daniel Rubenstein calling the spontaneous photographic practices as “visible speech” because of how quickly the images can be transmitted. Mikko Villi then added by saying those instantly transmitted photographs extends the traditional photography form of communication. Pictorial conversation or ‘visual chit chat’ is now the norm of communicating.
Then Palmer focuses on IPhone, the most popular and one of the most successful camera phone. He talks about the history of IPhone’s features and the emergence of IPhone applications, that affects the aesthetic of camera phone images. He said Instagram, “a hybrid of the Polaroid and the telegram” said Chesher that enables users to connect directly and personally with an audience by sharing their visual experience.
Photographs attract eyeballs, and where there are eyeballs there lies the possibility to make money
Camera phones played a role in the rising ‘citizen journalist’ for reporting world events. Their Raw images are many times used by the media (albeit sometimes unverified for it’s legitimacy) and Palmer believe this would only likely to continue.
Because many people may use iphone over the same area, Kate Shilton describe “participatory sensing” as an emerging form of mass data collection that may, under appropriate conditions, be conceived as a form of self-surveillance-an opportunity for individuals and groups to provide possibilities for community exploration, such it sometimes be called ‘reality mining’ to provide information to benefit the community. For example, the VandalTrak app allows its user to take photographs of illegal graffiti which could be uploaded with a geo-tag for police and other organizations.
Camera phones are no longer only concerned with reproducing the world, but might also enhance and augment our experience of it.
Because of the prevalence of photographers (not professional ones) of exploiting privacy or private pictures being unleashed/ used inappropriately, now There are mistrust of professional photographers working in public spaces like the beach, even though in history photographers are celebrated to work without the explicit permission of their subjects.
Photography has long been involved in configuring the boundaries between private and public space
Palmer’s points sound very interesting and I agree with some of It. Social media and camera phones has thinned the line of “Privacy” and often even questions the existence of it’s own meaning for people who knows it. It’s use and benefits are a double edge sword, because it can benefit anyone, regardless of intention/purpose. This brings back the question, what is photography, and what is mobile media photography? Does photography mentions a specific skill, or an ability?
