Commentary — 

Why do we take photographs?
Which device best meets that need?

I would argue almost all images are made to communicate visually — that is, to share something: an event, person, appearance, emotion, information.

Even the first caveman to scrawl an image on a rock wall of a large creature seen outside was likely trying to warn others of that predator more than he was trying to ensure he remembered the unforgettable encounter.

Today, when I take a picture it’s because I want someone else to see what I am seeing.

And I want them to see it right away: not tomorrow, not a week later.

And I think it’s unarguable that today, the phone delivers this capability more than anything else.

Making memories

Some people — and a lot of industry marketing — emphasize the “making memories” aspect of photography: you take a photograph today of something you want to remember tomorrow. And correspondingly, they argue, the most valuable photographs are the ones from long ago that prompt you to recall something otherwise forgotten.

However, studies show that today people actually value their most recent photos — and that value drops off rapidly within weeks if not days after the photo was taken. People want to share the image immediately — and if they don’t, they practically forget they’ve taken the photograph, let alone plan to look back at the photo later as a reminder of what they forgot.

I am not arguing that photography has no historical value, of course — nor am I saying that making memories is unimportant.

But I do not think it can be denied that, in most instances, these uses fall well behind the importance of sharing and communicating.

More so, it is not just a semantic distinction to redefine “making memories” as simply sharing through time: if I take a picture today that I don’t want anyone else to see but rather am solely capturing for my own later recall — then that is, in effect, “Me Today” sharing with “Me Tomorrow.” I am sharing a photo with a person separated from me by time if not distance.

Why might it be important to think of it this way? Because the goal is still getting an image from one person to another — sharing — and the easy, convenient transmission of that image continues to be a challenge for conventional photography.

Sharing Sights and sharing sites

When digital cameras were first marketed to consumers at somewhat affordable prices, conservative critics predicted they would never find an audience because film photography “wasn’t broken.” And you don’t fix what isn’t broke.

Almost 15 years ago I editorialized that instead, film photography was fundamentally broken: It was impossible to see the photograph you captured… that is, without taking the exposed film from the camera, delivering it to a photofinishing service, waiting several days, and then paying a substantial amount of money to see a few prints — only to then see that you failed to capture that once-in-a-lifetime moment. And it was impossible for anyone else to see those images unless you handed them those same prints, or paid in both time and money for copies to be made, which you then tediously and expensively mailed to them.

When digital cameras added an LCD, they immediately fixed the primary way in which film photography was broken: you could see the image the second you captured it, and so were able to ensure that you did indeed capture the memory, rather than finding out a week later that all you had was a blurry print.

However, digital cameras did not fix the issue of sharing — at least not too well. Yes, for us enthusiasts it was amazing: we could download the photographs from our cameras to our computers; select, edit, and enhance those photographs in our digital darkrooms; upload those photos to a website; then send a link to those images to the e-mail addresses of our friends and family; then some of those people could actually receive that e-mail on their own computers, click the link, “become a member” of the web photo sharing service — and at long last we would have indeed shared our photos with someone else.

Strangely enough >cough< all that was very slow to take off with the average person.

Most people, not surprisingly, did not actually want to fuss with computers, storage cards, cables, compression, and online communications.

Most explicitly, the cry arose that “Mom’s photographs were trapped in the camera!”

All that got much better in the next decade: most importantly, most people got much more comfortable going online — to the point where, today, most people are on Facebook, sharing not just photos but just about everything else. (And hey, some of that personal info is even shared on purpose!)

Wait a minute: did I say it all got much better? Scratch that: I’m looking at my one-year-old camera — and if I want to get a picture “trapped inside” this device to someone else… well, I have to do it pretty much exactly the way I did ten years ago: cards, cables, and computers.

And therein lies the problem — for the camera business. Because in that decade, another device arose that is much, much better at the primary purpose of photography: sharing sights.

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