Photo of the weak

If we look at the history of Photography, it was all about improving the way of capturing a moment in time. If we start at the time when silver halide, film, was used then we will see an amazing evolution from the box camera to our modern day digital camera. I will not elaborate on this change but the tools are not the only significant change in the world of Photography. I must say that our attitudes have changed as well.

Gone are the days when people dressed in their colourful finery's only to have the colour lost in black and white. Gone are the days when each plate or film was precious so you had to sit still for a long time to get the exposure right.

The pose was more or less similar every time. Standing or sitting upright, back straight, no smile, and eyes looking seriously at the camera.

Over the years, the advancement of film and camera technology has seen a change in the way photographs are taken. No longer for the wealthy or journalists. The camera has found it's way to the masses. We recorded out lives with pictures in black & white then colour films. They had their own inherent qualities.

In Black & White, you can see tonal contrasts clearly. The dark shadows against the highlights would provide detail that is not normally noticed by the naked eye.

Colour film is obviously great because of the colours. The snapshot shows history as it happened. The colours reveal themes of long ago. Jeans were blue, bicycles were red, curtains were green (unfortunately).

As the picture aged, it brought out another characteristic. Black & whites became sepia, the coloured pictures faded with a slight sepia tinge but even this was a trait on it's own. Think of pictures from the 70's and you would imagine photos with faded colours. I don't associate any other decade with similar pictures.

Now comes the digital age. No more film, we can select the film speed without having to use up one roll in order to change to a different roll. Just make your selection on the screen and viola, take any picture, any time. ISO 100 on a sunny day and ISO 400 at night on the same memory card.

We have seen many advancements in digital photography technology. Higher megapixels, noise reduction and full frame sensors to name a few. The size and quality of pictures are continually improving at a fast rate..... except in the case of phone cameras.

Most phone cameras are less than 3 megapixels in size. I have heard the arguments about quality not depending on the megapixels but when you are taking a picture with your phone, it would be nice to have the picture bigger than a thumbnail. Even the most popular phone now, the iPhone, has a 2 Megapixel camera!

Why have a camera on a phone? It is obvious that picture quality is not a priority here. Some phones have upped the ante such as the Nokia N95 with it's 5 Megapixel camera but no nobody is rushing to beat it.

To have a camera on the phone has made it convenient for everyone to "record that moment in time". We can take a picture almost anywhere and almost anytime. With this opportunity, what kind of pictures do we get? Thumbnails? Grainy(noisy), blurry, underexposed pictures. In some cases you cannot tell what the picture is about. Is that a person or thing or person's thing???

It has become so easy to carry a phone with a camera rather than a proper camera that so many pictures are originating from this. The worst part about this is that the pictures are shared. I have seen numerous Facebook albums with blurry or underexposed pictures of people. You can hardly make out a person much less the face. Have we become so complacent that we are willing to accept it as an actual picture of somebody? Facebook does not even enable us to zoom in on a picture so how can we see what that "thumbnail" is all about?

Are we taking pictures for granted and just snapping away as much as we can? Has the digital medium made each picture worth less than a thousand words that we just take as much as we can since it has become so cheap? I have seen shared photos in which a photo looks almost exactly the same as another except for the eyes looking in another direction for the second shot. Keep the first shot! Why have similar photos?

I am not asking for Professional pictures, heaven knows I am far from making them. I just want to see pictures that do tell a thousand words. When the desire to take a good picture exists then so will the desire to use a tool to allow that. Imagine a digital SLR that allows you to make and receive calls. I shudder to think....