In a recent post on his Blue Skunk Blog, my friend Doug wonders why people take so many photos these days. After all, much of what they’re recording are very familiar locations, often taken from the same vantage points.

 So, “for whom do we take photos and why?”.

With the invention of digital photography, especially in cell phones, I find it difficult to determine whether I should take a photo of something or not. Who needs yet one more picture of the pyramids or the Statue of Liberty or a mountain valley? (My son takes a photo of every meal he eats, I think.) At what point do we have such a flood of personal photos available, they somehow dilute rather than enhance our memories?  

All very good questions. Ones that I address in the conference photography sessions and classes I’ve done over the past decade or so. As well as during interactions with my family, friends, and others I meet (often while taking pictures).

As I told Doug in our email exchange, I often ask people “what do you plan to do with all those photos?”. If they have an answer, it’s usually rather vague. They don’t have a long-term plan past maybe posting one or two to social media.

After all, taking pictures these days is mostly an impulse decision, as opposed to the days of shooting film when we had to do more planning when it came to photography. Among other concerns was the limited storage capacity of the camera and the cost of processing the pictures.

However, the question of “what are you going to do with all those photos” is really a two-parter.

The first involves where we plan to store all those images, each of which takes up more space (that megapixel number manufacturers advertise) with each upgraded version of the camera.

Keeping everything on the phone¹ has become viable option for many people with the relatively huge amount of internal storage space they have available. Ignoring the problem of what happens to all those photos if the device breaks or is stolen.

In recent years, many of those in my sessions say the content of their phone, including the photos, is backed up to the cloud. Even if they’re not entirely sure what “cloud” means (“my son/daughter/neighbor set it up for me”) or how they might access that unseen storage on another device, if necessary. Plus they often haven’t considered the cost of that storage (which is really a rental charge) that usually increases with the growth of your files (of all kinds).

Then there’s the other side of the question, one I think is even more important: how you plan to organize and share your photographs? What’s the best way to let your family and friends – and maybe others – have access to all those meaningful images?

Facebook is usually the platform of choice for the people I know to share photos. Maybe Instagram.² Although neither is a great choice if you want your friends to find that picture again a day, week, or year from now. The search tools on social media are bad. And even worse for images.

Many people who use iPhones store their pictures in iCloud, which Apple makes a very simple process if you’re willing to rent enough space.³ On the other hand, they don’t make it especially easy to share the photos you have stored in their cloud. But, to be fair, neither does Google.

Anyway, I could probably continue on this topic for a few days and I’m guessing that most of the visitors to this page have already checked out.

But the subject is one that I find fascinating given that nearly everyone today is a photographer – many are becoming videographers as well – documenting every possible aspect of their corner of the culture.

With that in mind, I’ll just leave you to consider Doug’s somewhat existential final question in his post: “If a photo exists, but there is no one to view it, does it matter?”

For some reason, I seem to make lots of pictures of people taking photos. Like this couple taking advantage of the Brooklyn Bridge as a background.

1. We really need a new name for these devices since “phone” is probably the least important function. Certainly the least interesting.

2. Hopefully not Twitter!

3. I tell people to think of the cloud like one of those self-storage lockers. It’s great for stashing all the odds and ends of your life that you don’t currently need. But put enough stuff in there and you’ll have a hell of a time finding any one particular item. Plus, if you stop paying, the owners will trash everything.