Pick Up A News-Leader Today Springfieldians
// August 31st, 2006 // 7 Comments » // Thoughts
This is a good thing.
(Via Springfield News-Leader)
Zach Cobb has his sights set on being a professional photographer.
But it wasn’t always so. He had a change of heart near the end of his college career at Missouri State University, where he was studying media.
It wasn’t a class or an exceptional teacher that led Cobb to photography. The 23-year-old Blue Springs native credits photo sharing sites such as Flickr.com with sparking his interest in taking pictures. He’s one of countless new enthusiasts brought into the hobby by photo sharing and digital equipment.
“The digital age has just awakened more people to photography in general,” says David Eslick, a member of the Southwest Missouri Camera Club who’s been an amateur photographer for decades.
Digital photos have even made their way into the Ozark Empire Fair. Exhibits director Mary Quinn says entries in the digital photography category have jumped from 54 to almost 2,000 in the four years since digital photos became a category.
For Cobb, who has left school for now to focus on photos, the sites allowed his work to be see by many, which is something an amateur couldn’t easily achieve a few years ago.
“I think Flickr really broke down the barriers between the idea of a legitimate photographer and someone who is just taking pictures — the idea that there is this huge, insurmountable gap there,” he says.
Technology and the cost of equipment are still obstacles for the beginner, Cobbs says. Many digital SLR, or single lens reflex, cameras now cost less than $1,000. But even with a $150 point-and-shoot camera, it’s easy to step outside the front door and get creative.
The falling cost of equipment and the rising popularity of free photo-sharing sites mean more amateur shutterbugs than ever are getting the feeling of instant gratification that comes with digital photography.
But equipment alone does not make one a photographer.
That’s why local photographer Tim Buchanan says he’s learned a lot from critiques of his photos by other photographers. One place he gets those critiques is online at Nature Photographers, a Web site with public critique galleries.
“It’s one thing that’s really helped me grow as a photographer,” says Buchanan, who’s also the vice president of the Southwest Missouri Camera Club. “It makes you think more critically about your own work.”
Buchanan, who’s been into photography for about three years, is quick to add that many online critiques must still be taken with a grain of salt because you don’t always know who’s doing the critiquing.
Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo, is a user-generated Web site, meaning users upload their own photos to the site. While photo sharing sites have existed for years, most have always erred on the side of privacy and asked viewers to use a password given to them by the person who wants to share the photo.
But Flickr isn’t just about showing off baby photos for relatives. It has a more artistic bent, and the people who upload their pictures want them to be seen.
“There’s all this creativity that I was drawn to,” Cobb says of the site.
And there are countless categories, or tags, arranged by subject, style, place and more. There are nearly 6,000 photos with a Springfield, Mo., tag.
Photographers can allow people to comment on their work, and users can search for the most popular photos, too.
Flickr users just rate photos on their face value, Cobb says, so newcomers don’t have to worry much about anyone ripping their work. Most often, he thinks the cream truly rises to the top.
“A good picture is a good picture,” Cobb says.
Like thousands if not millions of others today, Cobb and Buchanan also have their own photo blogs — a personal Web site where they can share their photos along with their thoughts or stories behind the pictures.
They don’t get as many hits as a major site like Flickr, but personal sites allow for more freedom. A lot of photo blogging software has popped up on the Internet to help people build such pages. Cobb likes PixelPost, which he says is easy to use and ideal for photos.
Cobb has taken photos for Kansas City Chiefs fan magazine Warpaint Illustrated.
He says he’ll keep pushing for a career in photography. He thinks the medium is powerful in this digital age, in more ways than one.
“Everybody runs around to meetings with cell phones, instant messaging,” he says. “… But I think there’s really something to be said for capturing still moments right now.”
