攝影因這些公司而永遠改變

隨著Snapchat的母公司Snap, Inc.的上市，該軟件幾個月后也將進入新的篇章。公司能否取得成功還充滿變數：投資者文件中警告道，這家位于加利福尼亞州威尼斯海灘的公司的用戶，可能會被擁有“更多資源和更高全球認可度”的競爭對手——Facebook旗下的抓拍工具Instagram搶走。Snapchat的急速增長已經出現了減緩的征兆，過去6個月的新增用戶只有800萬。

不過，無論Snapchat能否在未來幾年激烈競爭的市場中存活，它與Instagram和蘋果（Apple）等競爭對手，對攝影媒介和視覺傳達的貢獻是空前的。Snap在首次公開募股的文件中如此寫道：“就像閃爍的光標催生了臺式機的大部分產品一樣，我們相信相機屏幕會是智能手機上大部分產品的起點。”

正是這股潮流改變了我們用圖像交流的方式。它由蘋果等手機廠商而始，他們與傳統相機廠商背道而馳，極大地簡化了攝影體驗。蘋果的產品營銷副總裁格雷格·喬斯維亞克表示：“我們希望讓用戶只需簡單地敲擊屏幕，就得到想要的照片。盡管為了讓照片看起來盡可能美觀，我們在幕后實際上做出了千億次努力。”

The next chapter of Snapchat’s life will begin over the coming months, as parent company Snap, Inc. goes public with an initial offering that could value the firm at approximately $20 billion. Success is far from certain: The Venice Beach, Calif.-based Snap has warned in investor documents that it could lose users to competitors with “greater resources and broader global recognition” — shorthand for the Facebook-owned Instagram. Snapchat’s once-meteoric growth is showing signs of slowing, with only 8 million new users over the last six months.

But whether or not Snapchat survives in a competitive market in the coming years, its contributions — along with those of rivals like Instagram and Apple — to the medium of photography and visual communication are unprecedented. Snap put it this way in its IPO documents: “In the way that the flashing cursor became the starting point for most products on desktop computers, we believe that the camera screen will be the starting point for most products on smartphones.”

It’s that approach that has changed the way we communicate with imagery. It started with phone manufacturers like Apple(aapl), which, in response to traditional camera makers, chose to buck the trend by drastically simplifying the photographic experience. “We want to make it so it’s a single tap and you get the picture you want, even though, in the background, we’re doing literally one hundred billion operations to make that photo look as good as it possibly can look,” says Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of product marketing.

iPhone相機應用之簡易是顛覆性的，當時，資深攝影者需要掌握感光度、光圈和快門速度等難以把握的設置，更不要說傳統相機上的其他幾十種功能。

通過簡化攝影體驗，將其嵌入我們隨身攜帶的設備，蘋果和三星（Samsung）等公司讓照片成為了我們如今交流的主要形式之一。類似Snapchat的產品Instagram Stories的產品主管羅比·施泰因表示：“科技伴隨我成長。我們首先接觸的是臺式機，它提供了即時通信功能，讓我們可以發郵件。當時，我們的溝通很大程度上要依賴鍵盤和文本。”而手機大小、可以放在口袋里的計算機伴隨著現在這一代人成長，“他們首先接觸的是相機，它可以一直放在口袋里，捕捉和分享他們的生活。”

因此，以相機為先的方式改變了攝影本身的功能。施泰因稱，攝影不只是記錄過去的事件，還可以作為交流的開端。他對《時代》表示：“有趣的可能不是照片本身，而是照片的情境：你和誰在一起，天氣怎么樣，感覺如何。”

正如首席執行官埃文·斯皮格爾在首次公開募股之前給潛在投資者的視頻中所言，對Snapchat而言，相機是其交互體驗的切入點，而情境則是其體驗的核心。Snapchat是第一款推廣這種照片形式的主流應用。用戶可以給照片和視頻添加地址標簽、表情和濾鏡，以及溫度、時間、速度等其他情境信息。而作為對手的其他應用也從此開始模仿這些功能。

最重要的是，Snapchat通過閱后即焚的功能，去掉了攝影的“包袱”。斯皮格爾在投資者視頻中表示：“每個人都認為相機是保存重要記憶的工具。所以推出一切都默認刪除的Snapchat時，我們必須解釋：這款應用是用于交流溝通的。我們發現，如果照片默認刪除，談話會變得更舒服、更熟悉、更自然。表現自我并不是一場競賽。重要的不是你怎樣表現好自己，而是分享你在那個時刻有何感受，在做什么。”

Snapchat這種新的交流方式取得了極大的成功，短短五年就積累了1.5億日活躍用戶，Instagram復制了這種做法，在去年11月推出了類似的功能，名為Stories。Instagram的施泰因表示：“那是我們見過的最大轉變，我們正在打造支持這種視覺通訊的產品。”不過這并不意味著Instagram會拋棄過去儲存照片記憶的功能。他補充道：“對我們而言，分享人生中的高光時刻和分享當下的生活是一種自然而然的互補，這就是Stories所提供的。”

據說蘋果也在研發類似Snapchat的產品。

Snapchat和Instagram正確的一點在于，能夠隨身攜帶的并不是最好的相機，讓你與人們緊密聯系的才是。施泰因表示：“很多你拍攝照片或視頻，就是為了分享它。所以，能讓你輕松迅速地接觸朋友，讓你發揮創造力，展現自己的，才是最好的相機。正因如此，我們意識到了把這些要素結合在一起的重要性。”

沒有跡象顯示“社交相機”的潮流會何時結束。隨著智能手機繼續突破硬件限制，通過軟件的更新和應用程序界面的發展（蘋果的喬斯維亞克表示：“我們會繼續設法改進自身的相機和攝影軟件，同時也會確保為第三方提供強大的應用程序界面。”），Snapchat和Instagram等公司將繼續改寫攝影的定義。（財富中文網）

作者：Olivier Laurent

譯者：嚴匡正

作者奧利維爾·勞倫是《時代》攝影版塊Lightbox的編輯。

The simplicity of the iPhone camera app was a game changer at a time when being a serious photographer typically meant mastering wonky settings like ISO, aperture and shutter speed, not to mention the dozens of other features available on traditional cameras.

By simplifying the camera experience and embedding it in a device that we all carry with us, companies like Apple and Samsung (ssnlf) have helped establish the image as a primary form of communication today. “I grew up with technology,” says Robby Stein, Instagram’s product lead for its Snapchat-like Stories feature. “The first thing that we had was the desktop computer and so we were on Instant Messenger, we were sending emails. The way you were communicating was very much based on a keyboard, based on text.” But today’s generation is growing up with a phone-sized computer in their pockets, he says. “Their first device is a camera and they have it in their pocket all the time to capture and share their lives.”

As a result, that camera-first approach is changing the function of the photograph itself. It’s not just the historical record of a past event, says Stein, but it can also be the starting point of communication. “It might not just be the photo itself that’s interesting, but it’s also the context around it,” he tells TIME. “Whom you’re with. What the weather is. How you’re feeling.”

For Snapchat, the camera is the launch point for interactive experiences, as CEO Evan Spiegel explained in a video for prospective investors released ahead of its IPO. Providing that context is at the center of Snapchat’s experience. Snapchat was the first mainstream app to popularize this new format for the photograph. Users can add location tags, mood stickers and filters, as well as other contextualizing information like temperature, time and speed, to photographs and videos. Rival apps have since aped those features.

Most importantly, Snapchat says it removed the “baggage” from the act of photographing by making images ephemeral. “Everyone thought of cameras as a way to save very important memories,” says Spielgel in the investor video. “So when we created Snapchat where everything is deleted by default . . . we had to explain that Snapchat is used for communicating, it’s used for talking. We find that conversation is more comfortable, more familiar and natural when it deletes by default. Self-expression isn’t a contest. It’s not about how well you can express yourself, it’s about being able to communicate how you feel and doing that in the moment.”

Snapchat was so successful with this new approach to communication – growing to 150 million daily users in just five years – that Instagram copied it, launching a similar feature called Stories last November. “That’s the biggest shift we’ve seen and we’re building products to enable that type of visual communication,” says Instagram’s Stein. But that doesn’t mean that Instagram is erasing its past as a place for photographic memories. “For us, there’s a natural complement between sharing a lot of the highlights of your life and sharing much more of your life in the moment, as it’s happening, which is what Stories has provided,” adds Stein.

Apple Is Reportedly Working on its Own Version of Snapchat

What Snapchat(snap) and Instagram(fb) are getting right is that the best camera isn’t the one you have with you, as the saying goes, but it’s the one that comes with your community of people. “A lot of the time, you take a photo or a video with the explicit purpose of sharing it,” says Stein. “So, the best camera is one that is connected to your friends, allows you to create and express yourself and allows you to do that very easily and quickly. That’s why we’re seeing the importance of all of those structures coming together.”

There’s no sign this “connected camera” trend will stop. As smartphones continue to improve beyond their own hardware limitations and through new software updates and APIs (“We continue to look at not just the improvements that we make to our own camera and photo software, but making sure we’re providing powerful APIs for our third parties,” says Apple’s Joswiak.), companies like Snapchat and Instagram will continue to rewrite the definition of photography.