A bigger picture
I have heard a professional photographer comment that most photographs people take are not worth printing. But many digital photographs are never intended to reach print stage. Instead they’re shared the moment they’re taken, among the people there at the time; or they're sent to friends, but never get beyond a quick glance and return message. It’s not just narcissism, more a broadening of communication and social bonding.
Amateur digital photographers still face practical usability problems in managing the images they create. Often the images languish on cameras or phones until space is needed for new photographs. Organising and archiving is tedious (particularly given people’s general reluctance to delete any of the pictures they’ve taken); on-line editing and printing services have improved but are still too techie for less confident users; home printing technology often ends, if not in tears, at least in a pile of wasted photographic paper; and only the most diligent refresh the images uploaded to digital photo frames. One can understand some nostalgia for the simplicity of sending off a roll of film in an envelope picked up at the airport.
Image © Rupauk Sircar
