摄影因这些公司而永远改变

随着Snapchat的母公司Snap, Inc.的上市，该软件几个月后也将进入新的篇章。公司能否取得成功还充满变数：投资者文件中警告道，这家位于加利福尼亚州威尼斯海滩的公司的用户，可能会被拥有“更多资源和更高全球认可度”的竞争对手——Facebook旗下的抓拍工具Instagram抢走。Snapchat的急速增长已经出现了减缓的征兆，过去6个月的新增用户只有800万。

不过，无论Snapchat能否在未来几年激烈竞争的市场中存活，它与Instagram和苹果（Apple）等竞争对手，对摄影媒介和视觉传达的贡献是空前的。Snap在首次公开募股的文件中如此写道：“就像闪烁的光标催生了台式机的大部分产品一样，我们相信相机屏幕会是智能手机上大部分产品的起点。”

正是这股潮流改变了我们用图像交流的方式。它由苹果等手机厂商而始，他们与传统相机厂商背道而驰，极大地简化了摄影体验。苹果的产品营销副总裁格雷格·乔斯维亚克表示：“我们希望让用户只需简单地敲击屏幕，就得到想要的照片。尽管为了让照片看起来尽可能美观，我们在幕后实际上做出了千亿次努力。”

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相机应用之简易是颠覆性的，当时，资深摄影者需要掌握感光度、光圈和快门速度等难以把握的设置，更不要说传统相机上的其他几十种功能。

通过简化摄影体验，将其嵌入我们随身携带的设备，苹果和三星（Samsung）等公司让照片成为了我们如今交流的主要形式之一。类似Snapchat的产品Instagram Stories的产品主管罗比·施泰因表示：“科技伴随我成长。我们首先接触的是台式机，它提供了即时通信功能，让我们可以发邮件。当时，我们的沟通很大程度上要依赖键盘和文本。”而手机大小、可以放在口袋里的计算机伴随着现在这一代人成长，“他们首先接触的是相机，它可以一直放在口袋里，捕捉和分享他们的生活。”

因此，以相机为先的方式改变了摄影本身的功能。施泰因称，摄影不只是记录过去的事件，还可以作为交流的开端。他对《时代》表示：“有趣的可能不是照片本身，而是照片的情境：你和谁在一起，天气怎么样，感觉如何。”

正如首席执行官埃文·斯皮格尔在首次公开募股之前给潜在投资者的视频中所言，对Snapchat而言，相机是其交互体验的切入点，而情境则是其体验的核心。Snapchat是第一款推广这种照片形式的主流应用。用户可以给照片和视频添加地址标签、表情和滤镜，以及温度、时间、速度等其他情境信息。而作为对手的其他应用也从此开始模仿这些功能。

最重要的是，Snapchat通过阅后即焚的功能，去掉了摄影的“包袱”。斯皮格尔在投资者视频中表示：“每个人都认为相机是保存重要记忆的工具。所以推出一切都默认删除的Snapchat时，我们必须解释：这款应用是用于交流沟通的。我们发现，如果照片默认删除，谈话会变得更舒服、更熟悉、更自然。表现自我并不是一场竞赛。重要的不是你怎样表现好自己，而是分享你在那个时刻有何感受，在做什么。”

Snapchat这种新的交流方式取得了极大的成功，短短五年就积累了1.5亿日活跃用户，Instagram复制了这种做法，在去年11月推出了类似的功能，名为Stories。Instagram的施泰因表示：“那是我们见过的最大转变，我们正在打造支持这种视觉通讯的产品。”不过这并不意味着Instagram会抛弃过去储存照片记忆的功能。他补充道：“对我们而言，分享人生中的高光时刻和分享当下的生活是一种自然而然的互补，这就是Stories所提供的。”

据说苹果也在研发类似Snapchat的产品。

Snapchat和Instagram正确的一点在于，能够随身携带的并不是最好的相机，让你与人们紧密联系的才是。施泰因表示：“很多你拍摄照片或视频，就是为了分享它。所以，能让你轻松迅速地接触朋友，让你发挥创造力，展现自己的，才是最好的相机。正因如此，我们意识到了把这些要素结合在一起的重要性。”

没有迹象显示“社交相机”的潮流会何时结束。随着智能手机继续突破硬件限制，通过软件的更新和应用程序界面的发展（苹果的乔斯维亚克表示：“我们会继续设法改进自身的相机和摄影软件，同时也会确保为第三方提供强大的应用程序界面。”），Snapchat和Instagram等公司将继续改写摄影的定义。（财富中文网）

作者：Olivier Laurent

译者：严匡正

作者奥利维尔·劳伦是《时代》摄影版块Lightbox的编辑。

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.