Why do people feel compelled to take them/print them/share them?
I went over to the primary school (as I do every third Wednesday) to take chapel. On arrival I was called into the principals office, not because I had been a bad girl, but because she had photos for me. Photos? Well as it happens, South Canberra Church has one of "those guys". A photo taker.
He had taken photos of me a few weeks ago when I had taken a sermon. So here we have 4 photos of me - blown up to almost as big as my computer screen, all of them are out of focus, and in every single one I am pulling my mouth into some weird shape. They are hideous. Well, they are ok,. But why do they need to be SO BIG??
And why do people print all of their photos. Now I sepak of "general, not specific evils" (thank you Elizabeth Bennet). There are two things about digital photography that everyone seems to be excited about, but nobody takes seriously.
- You only have to print the good ones. This is, indeed, a great advantage over film photography. It also means that people take thousands of photos. And print most of them - blurry, wonky, on a slant - it doesn't matter. Forget being subjected to someone's sideshow from their recent holiday - slide film is expensive, people can only afford so many. But digital photos are cheap and you sit through hours of agonisingly poor and disturbingly similar shots. "Here's aunt doris with the poodle, here's the poodle and aunt doris, here's aunt doris and the poodle again".
- We can share photos so easily. Why is it that with technology that can be so easily shared people all feel the need to take their own photo of any event? Why can't we share the photos around. That way, the subjects of the photo don't have to smile for five minutes and keep looking different directions. Example: at the recent pathfinder camp we had a little awards ceremony, during which Lachlan took photos of the kids receiving their awards. After the first group was photographed, every one seemed to catch on to this idea that taking a photo would be a good thing. And so out came the cameras - everyone needed to take their own shot. So now, rather than one photo of an event, we have ten that are essentially the same. Why not just take one and share it around? That way, with a little more time, and a little less stress for the subjects of the photo ("ok, now look over here, look at this one next...") everyone might end up with a copy of a decent photo. As it is, everyone will share the photos round and will end up with 10 mediocre shots of the same thing.
/rant
4 comments:
May I give a tentative "Amen!" to that? I think in some ways digital photography has made people lazier (esp with Photoshop, etc to try to fix bad photos or over-emphasise good ones), but by the same token, it removes the need to print all of the crummy ones.
But then yes, why do people still insist on showing the crummy ones!? It's like, "Look! I took 400 photos of the same thing! And I'll show you! And you're pulling an odd expression in ALL of them!" I think it's some variety of torture that passive-aggressive sadistic people enjoy.
Still, I love doing the digital thing.
You have distilled the two great and ironic pillars of amateur digital photography, and it was delightful to read.
As someone who threw out poor photos even when I used expensive slide film, I am amused by the typical desire to hoard bad digital photos. This amusement quickly turns to annoyance when such a photographer insists on sharing the said bad photos with me.
in point number 2 you suggested a concept that i (like every other person on this planet) is unfamiliar with. "share". The word gets thrown around quite a bit, espcially if you have syblings, but it is for every person a foreign word that means little or nothing. I find this is especially true in communities that are very tight. "Sharing" becomes a novelty.
(above comments are tongue-in-cheek and not meant to be used to harshly bash kristin)
would I ever bash you Kristin.... :)
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