The high cost of entry and the high price per image has historically inhibited photography's acceptance by the general public. This was never so for paper and pencil - only a lack of initiative stopped one from participating.
The low cost of entry and zero cost per image has encouraged everyone to learn to photograph. The fact that a lot of crap has materialized is irrelevant. Tens of millions of people are learning photography and every one of their mistakes teaches them something.
Slobodan's post of the Russian woman's farm photographs illustrates my point perfectly.
http://www.boredpanda.com/animal-children-photography-elena-shumilova/?fb_action_ids=10202522404557284&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B600223250049386%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.likes%22%5D&action_ref_map
This woman is an amateur photographer. Absent inexpensive digital photography, I doubt that she'd ever have progressed so far, so fast. And that would be our loss. And photography's.
I had a box Bownie at one stage, then a little Brownie Reflex TLR, the former running 620 and the latter 127, I think - prints were almost free; Mr Eastman took care of that. Paper and pencil being cheaply available and pretty ubiquitous isn't the point: the point is that even with all that pile of paper and those mugs full of standing, sentinel pencils with rubber helmets, the artists coming forth from all of that possibility have always formed but a tiny minority. Neither do I accept that either all of those dabbling with graphite desired to become proficient artists any more than those with toy digital cameras today intend to 'learn' photography, as you put it. The camera is just a notebook in which to record lunch or a family event, much as the honest little Brownie was.
The step up from dabbling and learning is huge: most of all it requires intent, and then dedication. With those you will probably learn, but that won't mean you become good. You just acquire a better idea of why you might not be.
As I mentioned somewhere earlier today or yesterday, the good will always out. It doesn't require recognition to be good: think Viv M. Nobody knew of her, yet she had more talent than many of those who did much the same thing only in a more attention-gathering milieu.
I really can't buy into the notion that 'everybody' doing it means more good people doing it. Good was ever tightly rationed.
But then that's just how I see life - I don't expect many others to feel like that, and it really doesn't matter to them nor to me, does it? We think as we do, and as long as we don't prevent others from thinking as they do (as long as that doesn't harm others) 'tis fine by me.
;-)
Rob C
