On Photography

What Hacker News says

1. stuxnet79Sep 2025
   > Is there some line photographers are crossing by taking two photos of separate scenes and joining them together in software to create a picture like the people sitting on the log in front of the mountains?

   This has been a concern people have had for years. You might benefit from reading Susan Sontag's essay On Photography - https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Sontag-Susan-Photography.p...

   My take, as soon as you pick up a camera to capture a scene you are telling a story and incorporating your own bias. For this reason, once I learned how cameras worked and dabbled in photography as an amateur it really transformed how I consume media. You could have the same subject and scene but tell a completely different story depending on the decisions you make as a photographer.

   Show morethread
2. mjbJun 2023
   There are relatively few things I've read that I can definitively point to as having almost instantly changed my mind on something. This is one of them. Reading often offers a broader understanding or different perspective, but seldom a sudden flash on insight.

   Others short reads that have changed my mind in that way include:

   - "The Inner Ring" by CS Lewis (https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/)

   - "On Photography" by Susan Sontag (https://www.amazon.com/Photography-Susan-Sontag/dp/031242009...)

   - "Black Souls in White Skins?" by Steve Biko (as far as I can see only widely available as part of the Collection "I write what I like")

   - "The Two Cultures" by CP Snow (https://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/snow_1...) (This one is a lot like Freeman's in that many summaries seem to completely misunderstand the argument it is making, and many people assume it says something it doesn't).

   - "Ironies of Automation" by Lisanne Bainbridge (https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...)

   - "Risk Management in a Dynamic Society" by Jens Rasmussen (http://sunnyday.mit.edu/16.863/rasmussen-safetyscience.pdf). If you read nothing else, check out Figure 3.

   Show morethread
3. JumpCrisscrossMay 2023
   Grab a copy of Susan Sontag’s On Photography.
   thread
4. klodolphNov 2022
   > > Sontag

   > We are not talking about professional photographers here I think

   Sontag wrote essays which are collected in the 1977 book "On Photography" (and a followup in 2003, "Regarding the Pain of Others"). It's not specifically about professional photography, but about photography in general--family vacation pictures, crime scene photos, etc.

   I like the essays because they provide some crucial insights to help me figure out questions like, "Why do I take pictures at all? What kind of pictures do I want to take? What purpose do these pictures serve? How should pictures represent my life?"

   > In my experience, a full-frame lens with these characteristics would either be huge and heavy or cost upwards from about US$500 new.

   This is easy enough to disprove by looking at the B&H catalog.

   You can find large and bulky 50mm f/1.4 lenses. There are also small & light ones. Generally speaking, there are a lot of different lens designs out there, and normal primes have more variety than most. You can find expensive and bulky designs, or simple and light designs, with various tradeoffs.

   For about the same price, you can get a 28mm f/2.8, which is typically larger, physically.

   > In good light.

   I have had problems with autofocus in poor light, when it's nighttime, and the lights are off, and I'm trying to take pictures of my cats. Anything less extreme and the autofocus works accurately and quickly.

   Then again, if I tried to take a picture of my cats at night with a wide-angle lens, I'd never get the pictures I wanted.

   > Apart from focal length affecting presence/emotional distance, which I suspect you genuinely haven't really thought about much,

   Don't be rude.

   I disagree with you. Saying that you suspect I "haven't really thought about [it]" is inappropriate.

   You also expressed the mistaken suspicion that I hadn't ever used wide angle primes--perhaps, just perhaps, you can't explain away our disagreement by saying that I'm ignorant, or hypothesizing that I'd agree with you if I just spent the time to think about it.

   Show morethread
5. SpaceInvaderMar 2022
   Since nobody here mentioned - I strongly recommend Susan Sontag's book - "On Photography"

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Photography

   thread
6. werberMar 2022
   Eloquent JS, for coding, On Photography by Sontag for Photography, Anything James Baldwin for literature, Anything Angela Davis or Emma Goldman for political theory, A blank (perhaps square lined, Rhodia brand) notebook and a pack of Stabillo pens for creativity.
   thread