In all of the discussions, editorials, commentaries, product reviews and technique tutorials that have been written over the past few years (as of this writing), the one issue that is never mentioned is the undeniable and irreversible shift in photography’s center of gravity. Perhaps the issue is unrecognized or perhaps it is simply being ignored but the reality is it started relatively slowly in 2016-2017, began accelerating just a year or two later and by 2021 the rupture of the traditional infrastructure was locked in place.

Before 2016-2017 photography’s center of gravity was defined by apparatus and processing in an infrastructure that was based on maintaining a certain amount of friction between the various independent nodes in the process.

By 2021 the friction had been reduced somewhat but it was still a significant component of the infrastructure.

It was that same year that photography’s center of gravity moved completely out of the node-based infrastructure and became a unified, ambient, integration‑centric, computational-based ecosystem that eliminated the friction. The smartphone camera and the culture it brought became the center of gravity. No add-ons. No accessories. No bags. Just the camera in a phone. Plain and simple.

The fundamental question is why?

Author’s note -- To make sure we are all on the same page here, when we are talking about photography’s center of gravity we are talking about the way the majority of people take photographs in any particular period and the photographic culture that springs from that majority. Currently approximately 94% of all photographs worldwide are made using a smartphone camera.

Prior to 2016 photography lived in the camera and the photograph was, in reality, simply the by product of using the camera. Discussions centered on all the marvelous things the camera could do, all of the buttons to push, levers to flip, rings to turn, and, oh-by-the-way, the pictures were pretty good too. All of the various accessories were contributors to this process.

All of this represented friction.

The friction is still there. Selecting the camera body, setting the ISO, selecting the lens, setting the aperture, setting the shutter speed, selecting the focus mode, making sure the output is set to the raw format of the camera manufacturer... and there are a dozen other settings and adjustments that are all friction points. All of this is prior to making the exposure. There is a little less friction with film but there is friction all the way through that process too.

Then there is the flash unit… the tripod… the filters. And for the technically adventurous there is the tethering to the laptop.

And then, after the “capture” there is unloading the media card, inserting it in the card reader, navigating to the particular image, opening it in the processing software. Selecting the sliders, levers and switches to make the adjustments. There is making sure the whole process is in pursuit of image perfection.

After all of this, there is the printing… test prints followed by proof prints and then the final print. If the photograph is destined for the internet, there is a whole different processing requirement.

The entire process is as much friction as anything else.

Life holds less friction for the casual photographer but it is still there even if the camera is run fully on automatic. The card still has to be removed from the camera and put into the card reader. Then it’s navigating to the particular image, opening it in the processing software. Selecting the sliders, levers and switches for the adjustments... making sure all of the process is in pursuit of image perfection. The photograph is printed and the print is evaluated to see if it’s “good”. If the photograph is destined to for the internet there is a whole different processing and then it’s uploaded.

Less friction, but friction none-the-less.

Beginning in 2007 all of the preceding became irrelevant. The iPhone collapsed the entire friction-laden, node-heavy, infrastructure-based process into a single gesture.

The iPhone and it’s associated revolution didn’t spring to life from a vacuum. In the five years leading to the release of the iPhone, fully automatic compact digital cameras dominated the market by orders of magnitude. These cameras eliminated a significant amount of friction but the distribution element, getting the photograph to others, was still a major concern. The photograph either had to be imported into a computer and emailed to recipients or it had to be printed at a local photo processor and “snail mailed”. Both significant points of friction.

By combining the camera with the capability to send a photograph anywhere in the world using an onboard email client via the internet, the iPhone and similar smartphone systems collapsed the entire process into a single friction-free device and process. The smartphone was now an integrated ecosystem offering capture, processing, distribution and archiving in a single gesture.

Granted, the cameras were not exceptional, low light response was a problem and the distribution was slow but the ecosystem met the consumer’s need for availability, convenience and connectivity, something manufacturers in the traditional infrastructure were (and still are, it seems) unable to do.

By 2017 smartphone camera systems had improved dramatically. Camera hardware improved drastically, software matured, the low light barrier was breached and fledgling portrait and night modes were introduced. With all of the improvements, the smartphone camera became the worldwide photographic instrument of choice with availability, convenience and connectivity still the driving factors.

By 2021 the drivers of 2017 (availability, convenience and connectivity) were the assumed defaults and the quality of the output became the differentiating factor. Bluntly, the quality of the smartphone output had gone from “good enough” pushing good (2007 - 2017) to good pushing exceptional (2017 – 2021) and then to exceptional and now world class (2021 – present). As the output quality improved, so did the availability and convenience. Users can text a photograph in seconds... they can send a photograph by email… they can concurrently send the photograph to their social media and photo sharing sites… they can concurrently send the photograph to their cloud-based archive. All seamlessly from a single device. A convenience package manufacturers in the traditional infrastructure are unable to provide.

All of this points to the rupture in the traditional infrastructure that has produced a widening divergence, and with it, a definable change in the culture of photography itself.

In the traditional infrastructure, photography is an event. The act requires preparation. There is selecting a camera (a device separate from the phone), checking the media card, confirming there is space, charging batteries and packing extras, and, perhaps most importantly, remembering to bring the camera at all. After the exposure, the photographer must unload the card, transfer the files, process them, and then distribute them through email or social media. The event is discrete, intentional, and bounded by friction at every stage.

The smartphone dissolved that event structure. It moved photography from event to ambiance and seamless integration. The phone is already with us. There is nothing to retrieve. There is nothing to prepare. If the battery dies, the phone dies so users keep it charged. Photography is ambient, continuous, and woven into the flow of daily life rather than carved out as a separate activity.

But the deepest cultural shift is that the smartphone camera has moved us from image‑making to meaning‑making.

In the infrastructure era, photography was primarily an expression of aesthetics, a crafted image produced through a technical ritual (and it did become and remains ritual).

In the smartphone era, the question is no longer “How do I make this picture?” but “What do I want to say?” The photograph is a communicative gesture, a unit of meaning, a message embedded in the everyday. The camera is no longer a tool for making images, it is a tool for making statements.

The cultural side of the shift in gravity has shown photography to be a language in and of itself. This is a language based in objects and context which combine to become statements. This capacity allows us to “show” in real terms and “tell” in real context. Thus the photograph is no longer an object in and of itself but a communicative document that can be quickly shared with others. A few examples --

-- “The red car parked on the city street” – we now know exactly what shade of red. We know if the street is a traffic-packed main thoroughfare, a commercial-area side street or a residential street.

-- “The overgrown landscaping” – we now know exactly how overgrown it is. We can see how the landscaping is blocking a sidewalk, growing onto the porch or starting to attach itself to the walls of the building.

-- “The intricate sand castle” – we now know exactly the level of intricacy and detail the builder put into the construction. We know where it was built. If there are people around the castle, we will get a sense of the scale the builder used. We can also infer the amount of time, effort and skill it took to create the castle.

This is a cultural shift of enormous proportion and photography’s communicative capacity only expands when positioned in combination with text.

And because of the smartphone camera’s now world-class image quality in combination with the default functions of availability, convenience and connectivity, photography’s center of gravity is now permanently and completely outside of the traditional infrastructure and shows no signs of returning. This is not to say that the traditional infrastructure is not important to photography, but it is no longer the center of gravity and it appears that the divergence is only expanding.

The reality is that smartphone camera systems now dominate both photographic production and culture, eclipsing the traditional camera infrastructure across technical, cultural, and workflow dimensions, shaping how the vast majority of photographs are captured, processed, and circulated.