The recent democratization of photography, through camera phones and social media, has changed the medium dramatically, exponentially increasing the number of images we take and see everyday. Anyone able to push a virtual button is capable of taking pictures at the proper exposure, in focus. Not long ago, the technical skills needed to operate cameras easily separated the pros from the amateurs. Today, anyone can be a brilliant photographer using their phone.

The popular consumer-level film photography of the Holga and Lomo toy-camera brands has made the transition to the digital world with the app and social network Hipstamatic: “Digital photography never looked so analog.” The popularity of this style of digital photography, based on aesthetic relics from photography’s amateur analog past, can be attributed to how easy it is now to take a ‘proper’ photo; when everyone is taking sharp pictures, blurry (boke) ones become a lot more interesting. These images (above) are from the Hipstamatic group on Flickr, that employ the app’s multitude of filters to mimic light leaks, old film, and cheap plastic lenses.

Getting a decent image with crisp detail and proper exposure used to be quite a challenge. Pioneers like Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, (above) and other San Francisco Group f/64 members spent days planning their shots out, and hours behind the lens, perfecting the composition and lighting for every frame. Their patience and determination shows in their work, which is full of detail, richness, and pleasing balance. The same 4×5 view cameras Ansel and Ed used 80 years ago would still rival the best professional digital cameras for image resolution today, and are still used exclusively by many artists and photo purists like Justine Kurland and Sally Mann. (below)

A few of the first photographers to break the tradition of sharply focused and carefully composed images were Robert Frank shooting black and white in the 50′s, and William Eggleston shooting color in the 60′s (below). They embraced the everyday, and turned them into fine art subjects; a road sign, a parking lot, old men on a stoop… A native of Switzerland, Frank travelled across the US in 1955 with the help of a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, shooting every level of social status and influence everywhere he went. “That crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and music comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that’s what Robert Frank has captured…” (from Jack Kerouac’s introduction to The Americans) These guys are the heroes of today’s generation of mobile-phone photographers searching for inspiration on their way to class or the office.

Analog or film photography isn’t going anywhere. It will always have a place in the pro-level art and design world. There are characteristics about it that can’t be replicated digitally. But the real revolution in photography is that everyone is now a photographer, and that we can now speak in pictures as easily as we do in words. So what defines you as a photographer isn’t what equipment you’ve got, but how developed your artistic, journalistic, or scientific point of view is, and how dedicated you are to pursuing that vision.