Facebook is killing photography. I cringe every time I see a blurry self portrait, or a snapshot that is oh so cute … that’s being consigned to the digital scrap heap of someone’s newsfeed.
William Henry Mowry, circa 1864. This tintype photograph is the earliest photo I have of a family member.
Photography is a relatively recent invention. Aristotle contemplated how images of the sun projected through a hole in 330 BC. The first practical, long-lived photographic image appeared in the 1830s, the Daguerreotype. With the invention of flexible film by George Eastman in 1889, handheld cameras became possible … and mobile media soon followed.
This photo of Simon and Maria Chucalovich’s family was taken by an itinerant photographer, selling his services door to door in about 1922. Photography — much less mobile photography! — was still unusual in this era, and quite a crowd gathered to watch this photograph being taken on the front step of the family home.
Today, if you believe the hype from digital journalists, you might think the only cameras being used are smartphones. There’s no doubt that the iPhone has changed the way that we think of and use cameras. Today’s camera phones wirelessly upload your pictures using your favorite app, and they give you instant gratification when you share your snaps and friends see them NOW.
The best camera to take a photograph is the one in your hand … so the more accessible smartphones are, the more likely they will take more pictures.
However, smartphones currently deliver pictures that are generally lower in quality than even low priced “point and shoot” cameras. The phone manufacturers are certainly improving the qualities of their cameras, but they have a long way to go before they will truly compete with the quality of dedicated handheld cameras.
So, here we are today. We have more pictures being taken by lower quality cameras. To deepen the problem, those pictures are almost never saved in a traditional sense … they’re uploaded to Facebook or Instagram or Flickr (and usually shrunk & degraded by the site’s algorithm). Once on a social media site, the photographer loses control of the image (and those implications will be discussed in a later post).
So if you take a picture that’s important, what do you do with it? Family photographs are heirlooms. They are passed from generation to generation. They are proudly displayed in their owner’s homes.
Unfortunately, today’s smartphones just aren’t up to that standard. Make no mistake, those smartphone cameras are improving and mobile snapshots can be wonderful. They are seldom, however, first quality photographs.
If your goal is to capture memories in photographs that last longer than your Facebook newsfeed allows, then you’ll want to find a way to take high quality photographs, display them and store them.
Here’s a resource for the key issues in purchasing a digital camera.
Here’s a “how to” resource for displaying and storing heirloom photographs.
The family of Phillip Patterson “PP” Shull, circa 1905. This hundred-year-old photograph has been passed through many hands for you to see it. Note the dog at the corner of the house, which must have been nailed in place to stay still long enough for the long exposure necessary for this photograph! Click on the photo to enlarge the image and see the dog carefully watching his master.
Facebook is killing photography! I completely agree.
As a freelance photographer and family historian, I agree about the poor quality images these days. Some day our children and their children will have nothing but fuzzy photographs to look at, if that at all. I’m always complaining to the family about their photographs, because sometimes I can’t even get a 4×6 printed. Very sad for this mother and grandmother who “breathes” photographs.