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Cora Brady, age 19, Ireland.
One of five photos taken of
my great grandmother.
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In early days of photography, a common person may
have three or four pictures taken in their lifetime because of the rarity and
expense of photography. A person had maybe a family portrait, possibly a headshot
later in life, most likely a marriage portrait (one photo from the entire
wedding) and another family portrait after starting a family. Photos were few and cherished then.
Today, most of us are carrying a simple camera in
the form of a smart phone and we regularly take pictures of ourselves, our
friends, our pets and our food.
We take a ton of pictures but we don’t look at our
pictures much.
Do you a photograph from the past 10 years printed,
framed and hanging on your wall? One generation ago families adorned walls
with vacation and family photos, and photo albums (books of family photos, for
those too young to know) were kept in a drawer and taken out on Thanksgiving
and Christmas. Today, our smart phones are our photo albums and the internet
our walls.
I don’t do like my parents or grandparents did, but I
have a digital photo frame, some framed landscapes from my favorite photographer
and a few of my best creative prints enlarged and nicely displayed as well as a
flower photo project my wife produced.
No matter your level of talent or if photography is a
part of your profession or not, shoot something creative and get it on your
wall.
What? You mean having 395 uncategorized images in my smartphone isn't sufficient? ;-)
ReplyDeleteEric’s comment made me remember there was a time of limbo after digital pocket cameras but before smart phones. Many people were taking photos like crazy but not using or even viewing them.
ReplyDeleteI learned this as an editor of a community newspaper. During that time people would bring their cameras to the office so we could run a photo of an event we wanted but did not attend, such as team pictures of pee-wee sports champions, and I had to search through birthday parties, Holloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, school plays, weddings, pets and hundreds of files to find the one picture I wanted.
People were not even putting files on their PCs. They were content to just look at them on that little 1.5 inch screen.
By the way, Eric Jackson has been a contributor to Ninja Journalism. You can see his post here: http://ninjajournalist.blogspot.com/2013/11/stuck-in-middle.html