The San Francisco Chronicle today reports on privacy and security issues surrounding camera phones, as well as including a few statistics. It's one of several articles about digital photography the newspaper is running in special section.
If you've been reading this weblog there's not much new information. The lead notes, as a sign of the times, that Apple Computer banned photography at its April shareholders meeting and security personnel checked for camera phones.
The article quotes David Linsalata, an analyst at IDC, who says camera phones comprised 36 percent of handset shipments in the United States in 2004. He forecasts that number will increase to 55 percent this year and 87 percent in 2009.
I'm also quoted in the article.
Image importance increasing or decreasing?
One of the articles about about effects of digital photography discusses whether it has increased or decreased the importance of photos. Volker von Glasenapp, who runs a San Francisco store, Just Film, says digital has decreased the value of images.
He says, Taking pictures used to be an event of sorts. Now they have camera phones -- they e-mail pictures, look at them once and trash them. The image is not what it used to be. The value of the image is no longer what it was."
However, John Grady, a sociology profressor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, says people are spending more time selecting and enhancing photos with software that used to be only for professionals.
My take
I believe both opinions are right. Images have become more throwaway items. If you mess up one photo of your cat you can take 100 more and not worry about the cost of film.
In addition, camera phones produce many more "good enough" (not good) images that people never would have kept when they were using film cameras -- just they way cellular phones have accustomed people to put up with poorer quality voice calls.
But with the introduction of online photo editing tools and easy-to-use editing software many people are spending much more time improving their photos -- that they couldn't do before.
"Converational imaging"
I also believe camera phones are making photos part of "conversations." People are shooting images, showing them to friends and relatives as soon as they're taken and then deciding whether to keep the photos.
The photo becomes part of communications the way it has never been before. Camera phones also enable others to become part of the conversation because other people around the world can see the photos almost in real-time on a handset, in e-mail or in an online album.
Actually, I'd question both von Glaseknapp's and Grady's conclusions. The ease of taking digital photos has not cheapened the value of individual pictures, I think. I'll point out that one of the prerogatives of a pro photog is they load their motorized 35-mm. SLRs with huge film magazines and blaze away dozens of shots of one subject at a a time. At the prices they charge, is von Glaseknapp going to argue their images are "cheapened"? I think not. And I do the same thing, without fear of running up huge costs for developing dozens of rolls of film - I'll take five or six shots of a subject sometimes, varying the angle and composition, just to get that perfect one exposure. And if I don't get that one extra picture now, who knows when I'll get the next chance?
The concept of improving and editing photos is not very attractive - I admit, I'm into the instant gratification aspect of digital photos. If I have to tweak the contrast and brightness and color too much, that just seems like a bad exposure. I'm finding that I may adjust contrast, but usually the most editing I'll do is to convert an image to black-and-white for effect.
Most of my pictures are used conversationally. As I go through my day, I'll see something that a friend would like, and I'll take the picture to e-mail to them later.
Posted by: tychocat | Thursday, May 26, 2005 at 11:10 PM