The Value of Nothing

Well, that’s another of life’s small pleasures that’s been taken from me... 

I should have known it was coming. Except, of course, I did know it was coming. I predicted this just a few days ago. I just didn’t expect it to arrive in such a crude and braggadocious package. 

The weather broke for the better this morning. Great rents of blue appeared in the grey blanket that’s been smothering the North West. I’d finished my writing for the morning – a breezy 1200 words on the Democrat rebellion that’s fizzled out and is more likely to see Donald Trump re-elected. I needed cheering up so when I saw the sun chasing shadows across the window, I decided to head down to the canal. I wanted to try a different technique to improve the shots I’ve been getting of the kingfisher.

Things began well enough. I’d only been there less than five minutes before I spotted my first kingfisher. A second arrived not long after. Over the next hour, I’d chase one or the other up and down the canal. Neither was doing much fishing, which was frustrating, but one briefly hovered over the water in a way I’d not seen before. It was stunning. So stunning, in fact, I forgot to lift my camera up and take a shot.

There was also the small matter fo my still struggling with all the usual problems I have with the old manky lens of mine. Fast shutter speeds plus a small aperture caused by the 2x teleconverter meant my ISO was maxed out, which meant the pictures would come out very noisy even if I could get them.

As I loitered, people went by. They were the usual mix of joggers and dog walkers. A few cyclists on their way to Warrington or St Helens or perhaps even further. 

On the whole, though, it was quiet and I was enjoying the quiet, taking a break on a bench, when a couple arrived. The guy had a camera.

“Did you get the kingfisher?” he asks.

I say I did but not good shots. 

“What lens you got?”

“It’s a 70-300mm zoom but I have a 2x teleconverter to take it to 600,” I explained, ashamed by the real Frankenlens in my lap. “What do you have?”

His camera was short and stubby and looked like a box. One of those bridge cameras with a non-interchangeable lens. They’re not a serious camera but full of novelty value as I’d soon discover.

“Oh, this. It’s 2000mm…”

“2000!” reply only the exclamation mark was probably bigger. Big enough to break a toe if it landed on your foot.

We chat about the camera, which turns out is a Nikon P900, a £500 camera that’s light on specs except for the insane lens. He demonstrates the zoom which is insane. And I mean: INSANE!

The irony is that I have a more professional camera – a Nikon z6ii – but very poor glass and, as the saying goes, a camera is only as good as the glass you put in front of it. I can't even begin to express how bad my lense is. Made for Sony, adapted to Nikon, which disables its autofocus... Awful.

So, I’m ruminating quietly on this development when the guy’s wife shouts: “The kingfisher!”

She’s pointing down the canal. It’s a long way away.

“It’ll probably fly down here soon…” I say. 

Or I should write: I naively say. 

The guy doesn’t move. From the bench where we’re sitting, he raises his camera and begins to zoom. And zoom. And zoom. And zoom... 

A minute later he nods. 

“Not bad,” he says and proceeds to show me a lovely shot of the kingfisher sitting on a branch, all beautifully in focus. It was exactly the kind of detailed nature shot I’d been hoping to take myself. The shot I’ve been trying to catch over days and long days, chasing the kingfishers from one perch to next. 

I smiled and expressed my admiration as within me a little pleasure died. 

I wrote recently that this is the problem with nature photography. Skill has been replaced by “investment”; the final product no longer an expression of artistry but income. It’s a dilemma I recognise in myself -- I like using a good camera -- but I try to mitigate the technological advantage by using manual focus for my street photography. I like results that are flawed in some way. I like the idea of the recovered shot. I like William Klein’s devotion to work in the dark room where he’d do anything to make his art through enlargement or cropping or even drawing on the finished shots. 

Now, of course, this is true of so much photography and as AI creeps into all walks of life, it’s becoming the problem with writing, cartooning, painting, and everything we used to know as “art”. The future belongs to those who can afford to pay for the subscriptions to the AI models. And the richer people already have access to the better models. The future belongs to those who can afford to pay Grammarly to fix their rank awful prose and Photoshop to fix their unimaginative photographs or the next generation of AI tools which will finish your sentences for you or write an entire page from a simple prompt…

Hey, Alexa, write me a 20-minute stand-up routine about the strange concave cavity at the base of Nigel Farage’s back…

Hey Google, compose me an epic poem for the postmodern age whilst redefining the terms of poetic language in a Derridean nexus of meaning and counter meaning…

Back in 2022, a “photographer” called Siobhan Walker was one of the first to use AI to create their art. It was one of the most depressing examples I’ve seen. She created “documentary photographs” about northern working-class Britain in which the people’s lives being documented were entirely AI-generated. It was the ultimate example of gear over humanity. 

This has always annoyed me about photography and why I generally loathe much of the photo industry, especially the influencers on Youtube who obsess over the gear but generally take awful photos (naming no names, cough, Froknows...) It’s why I’m drawn to the exact opposite: the photographers who show life as chaos and aesthetically raw. Give me Moriyama and Klein rather than Chelsea and Tony Northrup, the king and queen of Youtube photography geekdom. A few years ago, Tony made a podcast in which he suggested that street photography should be banned, which makes me still froth thinking about it. But it fits his nice clean model of photography where people spend shitloads on expensive telephoto lenses to take pictures of birds or landscapes or…. for fuck’s sake… wedding photography.

I don’t know what to think or to say about a world in which technology takes away the challenge, where there is no need for any particular skill, and effort can be minimised. Here’s the camera that takes the shot for you. Why walk 20 miles around Manchester doing street photography when the computer can do it for you. Here’s the autofocus which can nail the focus on the eyeball of the bird flying 300 feet in the air. Here’s the 2000mm lens and… oh look… here’s a picture of a bird that’s notoriously difficult to photograph but I’ve done it within five minutes of arriving and whilst sitting sitting chatting on a park bench.

There’s more to this story – a strange matter of coincidence – not worth dwelling on. The important bit has been noted. 

I used to enjoy wandering down to the canal and photographing the kingfisher just like I once enjoyed drawing cartoons and writing books. But we live in a world where there is no call for skill and, as paradoxical as it sounds, people don’t know the value of anything whilst everything now has a price or comes with a subscription model.

It’s all so… debilitating.