Software ate the camera, but freed the photograph

This is an absolutely brilliant piece about the emergence of smart phones as legitimate photography instruments - but at a much more profound level hits on our frequent inability to separate love for a particular tool from passion for a particular craft. If you're anything like me, it's a very humbling read.. 

http://craigmod.com/journal/photography_hello/

Over the last decade, my rule as a creator — be it as a programmer, writer, designer or photographer — has been to use the simplest possible tool for the job. Use the simplest tool until you breach its potential. If you think you’re using the simplest tool and find one simpler yet, switch to that.

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One of the unexpected joys of shooting with my iPhone has been finding out just how much craft exists in a place supposedly bereft of craft. It’s an oddly rigid assessment to assume a smartphone somehow denies craft from the user. In fact, the argument that craft dissipates as modalities simplify or digitize is so old as to be a running joke for any new media practitioner. From physical to digital film editing, from physical to digital graphic design, from anything to the iPad, and from physical to digital photography, we’ve heard it before: Craft is lost!

My belief is is much simpler: craft inhabits whatever medium or tool you work with, if you let it.

The smartphone brings the network close to photographs in a way similar to how the iPod brought digital music closer to our ears. By removing a few steps (bluetooth sync, extra batteries, another device), the smartphone drastically decreases the dissonance between wanting and doing

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Software ate the camera, but freed the photograph. It makes me uncomfortable, and if you care about cameras, it should make you uncomfortable, too. But — and here’s the trick — try to see if there isn't something valuable in that discomfort, if it doesn't bring with it a way to look at photography with fresh eyes, with new excitement.