Before the age of the smartphone, not everyone had cameras and it took skills and a good eye to capture and create a great photograph. Today, with the huge range of camera apps on our smartphones, we’re all amateur photographers, and pretty good ones at that, since the quality of smartphone images now nearly equals that of digital cameras.
The new ease of photography has given us a tremendous appetite for capturing the magical and the ordinary.We are obsessed with documenting everyday moments, whether it’s a shot of our breakfast, our cat—or the cat’s breakfast.
Cameras are everywhere-- a situation that is transforming the way we experience dramatic events. With cameras observing most urban centers, have we gotten to the point where cameras don’t need photographers and photographers don’t even need cameras? When there are political events or natural disasters, it is ordinary citizens with cell phones--not photojournalists—who often provide the first news images. Quality still matters,but it’s less important than what’s relevant and instantly shared.
Before digital images, most people trusted photographs to accurately reflect reality. Yet photography has always more stories than we assume. Each picture is a result of a series of decisions—where to stand, what lens to use, what to leave in and out of the frame. Images can also be colored, brightened, faded, and scratched to make photographs more artistic, or to give them an antique look. Such images may be more useful in communicating how the people behind the camera felt than in documenting what was actually in front of the camera.
It’s not clear whether this flowering of image making will lead to a public that better appreciates and understands images or simply numb us to the deep effects a well-made image can have. But the change is unavoidable. Perhaps we are witnessing the development of a universal visual language, one that could change the way we relate to each other and the world. Of course, as with any language, there will be those who produce poetry and those who make shopping lists.
【小题1】What makes us all amateur photographers?| A．That it takes no skills to take photographs. |
| B．That cell phones provide great convenience. |
| C．That we are more attracted to creating images. |
| D．That professional standards appear to be falling. |
| A．Photographers don’t need a camera at all. |
| B．We may get the latest images more easily. |
| C．Natural disasters can be detected in advance. |
| D．People pay more attention to the quality of photos. |
| A．The creative functions of camera apps. |
| B．The attractive features of digital images. |
| C．The subjective factors behind photographs. |
| D．The negative reviews about artistic images. |
| A．It can be both used in writing poetry and shopping. |
| B．It will contribute to our ability to appreciate images. |
| C．It has a great influence on the development of the universe. |
| D．It offers us a new tool of communication to express ourselves. |
