Picture This

ID: 050515.1626

In a May 5, 2005 expired New York Times story reported on CNET News.com, Digital cameras--stop them before they shoot again, Amy Harmon notes Americans are "indulging in an unparalleled binge of personal picture taking, and some digital photographers find themselves drowning in the product of their enthusiasm, … even in a digital realm less may still be more." Harmon quotes a Brooklyn writer's recommendation to limit email to "three pictures, no more than 12 to an online 'album,' no albums more than twice a year," — exceptions might be made for grandparents and best friends.

According to InfoTrends, Americans shot 28 billion digital pictures, excluding pictures deleted before storage or printing — a more than 25% increase from the previous year. That turns out to be over a hundred photographs per year for every man, woman, and child in America. Roughly, 400 per family.

When my mother died, I inherited her collection of family photographs, which included her mother's collection as well, representing something close to a cenury of experiences. The number of photographs, inlcuding duplicates, is less than a thousand. They all fit in a single paper bag.

Why are people shooting so many more pictures now? I like to think my mother's and grandmother's lives were as memorable to them as people's are today. Children were born, went to the prom, graduated from high school and college, got married. People gathered together on special occasions, bought new cars and houses, went on vacations. (I have photographs of my grandmother vacationing in Cuba, of all places.) What happened? Did people suddenly lose their ability to remember, and need more external storage?

Part of the problem is that photographs are now "free." Rather than buy non-reusable film that has to be processed, memory devices for digital cameras can be re-used. The only cost for taking a picture is the amortised cost of the camera — which goes to near zero as more pictures are taken — and the time spent taking the photograph. There is no penalty for taking too many photographs. They have lost something of their value. They are not "dear." Harmon quotes one avid photographer as saying, "The constant stream of images somewhat cheapens the medium for me."

There is a hidden cost however: time. The time to take photographs has only marginally decreased. (Putting in a new memory stick is a lot faster than loading film.) Time per shot has not decreased. With more shots being taken, more time's spent taking photographs.

At the other end, time for looking at photographs has decreased. There are other demands on our time — TV, video games, the internet. That, and perhaps the generally reduced resolution, means we look at our photographs less; more superficially. Harmon comments on another amateur photographer:

The idea of passing on hundreds of CDs filled with pictures to her nephews was wholly unappealing, Fronsdale said, when she realized they would never casually pull them out the way she did with an old-fashioned photo album when she and her mother were recently reminiscing about a family friend.

Something about this reminds me of an experience I had in Venice, Italy. At a small, romantic cafe, a young couple sat at a nearby table. After ordering coffees, they each pulled out cellphones and began talking to disembodied voices. They did this the entire time I saw them together. Had I been sitting across from a pretty girl, …

And all the time we spend taking these photographs? As Jim Lewis noted in his February 2002 article for Wired, Memory Overload, "If life gets recorded in real time, it hardly counts as a record at all. It certainly has less impact, and in extreme examples it's self-defeating." It becomes an imitation of life.

What would happen if instead of taking Uncle Ned's picture, you sat down and talked to him? Would you remember him any less? More? Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Are your baby's grandparents more interested in what their grandchild looks like, or in how you feel about the child? What it's done.

In many ways, digital photography is having the same effect as email had on communication — cheapening it of course, but also making it less useful. Email — so much easier to write than a letter or memorandum — lets people get lazy, imprecise, and overly casual to the point where it contains little information (and knowledge). Easy photography may make every picture worth far less than a thousand words.

Apparently CNET News.com "expires" New York Times stories that are no longer available free-of-charge by redirecting the link to search pages that do not list the expired story. You can circumvent this however, as follows: After you click an expired link — like the one above — as soon as the page loads, click your browser's stop button. This prevents the redirection. If you need to follow a link on this page, open the link in a new tab. (If your browser doesn't support tabs, get a new browser!) You can even use the "expired" page's Print button to print a copy.

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