Me an' my photos

Time is a funny thing - it ebbs, flows, passes, lags, etc. One way to capture it is through pictures - one second in time forever frozen, based on what you were seeing or thinking about at that particular moment. This process has changed so much since the invention of the cell phone - the term "viral" has taken on a new meaning due to these devices.

Once upon a time, we had cameras - stand-alone portable devices that were used to capture images on film. Film was available in different formats based on your camera type, and different speeds. For single lens reflex (SLR) cameras, 100 to 1000 was the typical range - the lower the number, the less grain, light exposure, and slower image capture speed you got. The most "instant" images we could get were from Polaroid cameras, whose film packs allowed pictures to develop before your eyes.

You only had a particular opportunity to snap your picture the way you think you wanted it to look - I won't go into the myriad settings on a camera (especially a SLR) other than Auto being my best friend. Once you were done with that single shot, you were at the mercy of how many pictures you had left on the roll - a concept lost to time nowadays. Then it was off to a photo developer (I used to use O'Henry's a lot in NYC, and Fotomat was a popular store) to turn your film in and have to wait a week or so until your photos came back.

Now you were ready for "discovery" time! This was where you'd review your shots and either say "That's exactly what I wanted" or "Who/what/where is that?" Unless you were very meticulous, a few of your shots were completely incomprehensible and remain a mystery to this day! On the flip side, there are pictures we have that may have held meaning at some point but no longer do, victims of the ravages of time on the memory.

Those days are really gone.

Now we have photographic devices integrated into our portable devices that allow you to not only capture an image, but even text and sounds INSTANTLY. The new term for this is "viral", in the sense that the time and "distance" to see and share these images has respectively shrunk and grown. You also no longer have to guess about images you've taken - you see them a second later, and you make the decision whether or not to save it or trash it.

Another thing that's changed is the actual media itself. Polaroid discontinued their instant film packs (good thing Fuji realized there is still a market for them), and film rolls take up less space in stores. Now you just purchase large capacity memory cards (and I still think Kodak missed the boat on this ENTIRELY) and save your images on a chip that can be moved to different devices. Going to make prints from your images is an afterthought, not the only option, and most people's printers are good enough to create prints. You have now become the photographer, editor, processor, and developer of your life.

Is this a good thing? That's a double-edged sword - it was kind of nice to have mystery and limits to what pictures you could or would take in a given situation. On the other hand, we can tailor or experiences on the fly to reflect our mood at the time rather than at a later time. Heck, we can even group them together in a virtual album and theme it in almost infinite ways.