It turns out that people are ‘photographing’ the World Cup by taking pictures of their television sets – including professional sports shooters. That’s right, World Cup images are turning up on Instagram from photographers who aren’t even on the same continent, let alone the stadium in question.
It would seem that the person who sparked this particular trend is Paris-based professional sports photographer, Florence Pernet (@flo_pernet). Upon failing to get accreditation for the World Cup, he found an alternative route by photographing games on a television set.
Florence isn’t the first photographer to think of this, going so far as to credit Matthew Johnson (@matthewjohnson) in one of her posts. Matthew created a series called Screen Time, which centers around television photography. However, this interesting style of photography has courted some interesting discussions regarding photography ethics.
An Instagrammer called @imbue_visual has posted a Reel about it, calling Florence’s work and the reasoning behind the idea “brilliant”, as well as praising the artistic results, before essentially questioning others jumping on the bandwagon, stating:
“It stops becoming a statement and starts being more of a creative style. Like, come on, the broadcaster has found the angle.”
Fashion influencer and photographer Damien Broderick (@damienbroderick) has also commented on the Reel, stating: “I couldn’t travel to India or back in time. So i decided to photograph this book [sic].”
Another commenter says, “You’re not shooting the whole frame of the tv tho. You are finding your own view through another’s view [sic]”. The Portuguese national team has even reposted one of Florence's images of Cristiano Ronaldo.
Clearly the internet is split. However, it is important to note that Florence’s images look nothing like the framing used on television. Often they are zoomed in, so you can see the screen’s pixels, captured with slow shutter speeds to form gesture-drawing-like abstracts, or color graded extensively.
In a world where creators are worried about AI scraping their works, this sort of debate is always going to divide the community. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but what I will say to detractors is, where does it stop?
You wouldn’t lambast an architectural photographer for finding their unique angle when framing a building or structure they didn’t design or build…
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