The aforementioned question popped into my head the other day whilst I was pouring over the Shorpy website, a fantastic site of old photos that have been digitised and retouched. You really need to have a look yourself to see how good these photos are. There really are some stunning photos on there. This shot for example, taken in 1947, over 60 years ago, is a beautiful photo. I don’t know if I could reproduce that image today. But I bet there are plenty of people who could.

And that brings me to the point of this BLOG entry. Is it too easy to take a good photo? Obviously, it isn’t, otherwise Flickr and sites like it would be loaded to the brim with magnificent images, and clearly, they are not. But I wonder what what the photographers of the mid 20th century think of the current day photo makers. Would they be sitting back in the recliners recalling the old days of large format cameras and lugging them 20 miles along a gravel road in bare feet just to get a shot. Not having the fancy exposure meters in todays cameras. The ability to chimp a shot, on the spot and retake it. The luxury of Photoshop compared to the dark room.

Where the photographers of days gone by better photographers than today? I hear names like Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Paul Strand and W. Eugene Smith and wonder how they would go with a nice new Nikon D3 and a few fancy lenses. Would Ansel Adams still take B&W landscapes? Or would they be colour rich ultra wide spectaculars?

I also wonder if they realise that their photos will be regarded as classics. Did Breson realise at the time that his photo of the man jumping a puddle would be a classic. Considering the man jumping the puddle was obviously still going to end up in the water, wouldn’t it have been better if the shot was slightly later, thus showing the man standing on water? Would that have changed peoples perception of the shot. After having heard some of the critics talk about the photo, I doubt it would have made any difference. Breson called it the decisive moment. I think it was a missed chance. Would he have taken a better photo with a Canon 1D MkIII firing away at 10 frames per second?

One thing that we can try is using older gear to take photos. I have already touched on that in the previous BLOG article, “Film, why is it so addictive?”. Using old equipment is one way to compare you photos from the older gear vs the newer gear.

There is no right answer to any of this, much like a lot of the previous BLOG entries. It is just a chance to discuss another aspect of a very interesting pass time, hobby or occupation. Feel free to discuss this. Suggest other photos or photographers. Have you tried to take photos with older gear? What was your experience?