Physical Photographs: A Weird Afterthought
By Deane Barker | August 21, 2010 | 5 Comments
When digital cameras first hit the market, they were kind of a novelty. My mother bought one, but she didn’t love it because it was just an expensive, complicated way for her to get a physical photograph.
And that’s all that mattered to her – the physical photograph. The digital version was an annoying step in the process. My wife was the same way for a long time.
Related to this, two years ago, I posted a short item about how global paper use is declining. In it, I quoted this:
“Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is,” says Brewster Kahle, the founder and director of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library.
This has also become true with pictures. We had family portraits taken a couple weeks ago. They turned out great, and my wife made an appointment with the photographer to pick the ones she wanted. She asked me which ones I wanted, and I was a little taken aback by the question.
“Well, I want all of them,” I responded. “Can’t you just get a CD?”
“Maybe,” Annie said. “But which ones do you want…for real? Like, to put in an album?”
“Um…none…of…them?”
I honestly couldn’t figure out what I would do with a paper photograph. I was at a loss of what the value was. It seemed so…limiting.
I just got 400+ pictures from a friend of her vacation to Italy. I put them on my iPad, which is fantastic for scrolling through large sets of pictures. This is frankly all the photo album I think I will ever need.
So, image media has officially been reversed. The digital version used to be an annoying stepping stone to a physical version. Now, the physical version is almost a weird afterthought.
What This Links To
Comments
-
The physical photograph has the honor of occupying two places in our house, now.
- The walls, where we have tons of framed pictures of our kids.
- The basement, in a cupboard, where they sit neglected and ignored.
-
Portraitists remain the underbelly, refusing (in my admittedly limited experience) to release the digital copies. The phrase “what a racket” comes to mind.
I still like photo albums for their tactile immediacy & sharability, especially for use by young kids.
-
I just got 400+ pictures from a friend of her vacation to Italy. I put them on my iPad, which is fantastic for scrolling through large sets of pictures. This is frankly all the photo album I think I will ever need.
Until, of course, your iPad gets stolen or left on the counter & one of the kids knocks it to the floor and it never boots up again, or dropped in a toilet, or… The nice thing about a physical copy is that the digital version can be far too fragile. Joel Belz wrote a good piece on that subject recently; http://www.worldmag.com/articles/16981 . In short, digital stuff is great until the devices used to view them have problems. Then they aren’t so great.
Also, The Book Of Eli offers a lesson on this topic… ;o)
-
Unless, of course, you are using som kind of backup-solution, like for example Dropbox. A physical photoalbum can also be lost, in a fire for example. So, digital is better, but as always, you have to know what you are doing.
-
“or dropped in a toilet”
Dropping a phyical picture into a toilet render that copy useless… …I’m pretty sure most people would just flush…