I remember back in the days of film cameras when something really had to be photo-worthy, as you only had like 12-16 shots and they ultimately cost you like 50 cents apiece after processing and printing. Today it’s all digital and you can snap off as many as your device will save. I feel like the value of a photo has been lost.
Looking through all my vacation photos from last year and a couple years back I realize how many photos I took of things that are just postcard bullshit. Mostly all touristy shit that everyone takes a photo of, and that anyone can find a better photo of online.
I realized that when I look at other peoples’ photos, I skip right over that shit. The ones I actually stop and look at are the photos that have the people I know in them. I can find a photo of just about every inch of Angkor Wat with a simple Google image search. What Google won’t find is a picture of my friend standing in front of it, and that’s what I want to see.
So my resolution is to no longer photograph just stuff, but rather only photograph people in front of stuff.
How about “meaningful stuff that I won’t find pix of online”?
After my aunt’s funeral last summer, I took photos of the inside and outside of her house. I used to stay there with her and my uncle and cousins every Christmas when I was growing up; I’ve got a shit-ton of memories of that house. And since my uncle died several years earlier, and my cousins have moved away from there, this was likely the last time I’d ever be inside her house. Hell, more likely than not, I’ll never be back to that part of Kansas again.
Taking pictures of ‘stuff’, is actually a great tool for people looking to declutter their lives. Like seriously downsize. There’s a lot of things you don’t need to hang onto, and a photo can make letting it go, a lot easier.
Also, I visited Machu Picchu in the 90’s. As impressive as online photos are it truly does not look the same now as it does in our photos. Same for Borobudur, Prambanan, Sukothai, etc, and I would guess many other sites with ongoing archeology.
Your point is valid, of course, but photos of stuff have their place, I believe.
Hmmm…my photo taking philosophy is almost the opposite of yours…most of the time I try to keep people out of the frame. They detract from the stuff that I’m trying to capture. (I do like taking pictures of people taking pictures of each other in front of viewpoints and roadside attractions though.)
As far as the availability of professional quality images of places I’ve been…sure, there are tons of pics of places I’ve been that are far better than the ones I take. But when I look at my photos, even the not-so-great ones, I’m transported back to that moment in time and reminded of MY experience; if it was cold or hot, windy or calm, how far I had hiked to get to that spot, stuff like that.
Looking at other people’s photos, no matter how great they are, doesn’t give me that kind of flash of memory at all.
I love cruising antique stores and malls and taking pics of stuff that I’d love to have… but I have absolutely no room for more kitsch, so having the photo is nearly as good.
I find that I rarely look at photos I’ve taken, even the supposedly meaningful ones. So I just almost never take photos. Fortunately my wife takes all sorts of photos so I guess I’m unlikely to really miss out on anything.
Plus not giving a shit about the camera in your phone allows you to buy much cheaper phones since that’s often one of the few major differences between top end phones and more modest models.
And I admit, I have pictures of just things I took that I really like. We once visited the Botanical Garden in NOLA (FYI great botanical garden, if you’re into that sort of thing) and I got a lot of good close up photos of interesting plants there. One of them is my cell phone wallpaper right now.
I just don’t want to waste time and effort taking photos I know I’m never going to look at again. I guess what I really wanted to say was I’m only going to take pictures of unique things that I won’t find anywhere else, and that basically excludes 100% of the touristy postcard stuff, and if I do take a picture of those things, it’s going to have people that I know featured prominently in them.
I support this philosophy. When I browse other people’s pictures on Facebook, Instagram, etc I scroll right past objects and only pause to look at people. But interestingly enough, I pay attention to what is behind people in the pictures (wow, her kitchen is messy!).
And I never ever need to see any pictures of your food. Ugh, why is this even a thing?
I am in agreement with the OP. I recently went thru and sorted a large stash of old photos (non-digital) in order to organize and determine what was in all those envelopes. All of them were from our life before digital camera, mind you. There were many photos of nice scenery, but without context, it was difficult to assign them to a memory, so they are just nice scenery, never to be used for anything, and just taking up space.
Fast forward to digital camera age and cell phones with decent cameras (we dont really use a “camera” any more), and I noticed a few years ago too many “scenery” shots, which while nice, are forgettable. Whereas, when my kid, my wife, or my dog are in them, there is a better trigger for the location, situation, and feelings, so now most of my photos have people (even strangers) in them. If I am alone and see a nice setting on a bike tour, the bike becomes the subject and the scenery the frame (“hey, that’s MY bike at that location”). The digital photos can be easily organized and stored, and put into interesting slideshows, with added music, to be enjoyed (more so with people/subjects in them that provide context).
Not to turn this into an amateur photo gallery, but sometimes I’ll whip out the phone for when I see something unusual. In this case, the sky was two-tone, and the clouds looked like they were vertically aligned. There’s been so many “if I only had a camera” moments before the smart phone era.
This, exactly. Even photographing the typical postcard stuff, I can usually find an angle that few people have shot. Like the Eiffel Tower. I have a beautiful symmetrical shot from the inside, looking out through one of the corners; and another, looking straight up from the center of the inside. And lots of shots looking out from the elevator, with the beams criss-crossing in the foreground.
And the 2017 solar eclipse: I had already photographed other eclipses, so with that one I shot the people looking at it, and the pattern of little crescents on the driveway, and the 360-degree “sunset” on the horizon.
Since the advent of digital cameras, I tend to take tons of photos while on vacation - especially multiple shots of any specific thing. (I used to do this with film cameras too, albeit to a lesser extent).
The trick is that after you get home, you sift through all those photos and cull them mercilessly. Your goal is to distill that ocean of photos down to a rich broth that is likely to be interesting viewing at a later date. Get rid of the dud shots, the repeats, and so on. Take the two-dozen photos you shot from that one scenic overlook, and get it down to the four or five best shots.
I have friends that take tons of photos, but then don’t cull them after the fact; it’s a chore when I’m invited to browse through collections like that.
I would tend to agree with this. A photo of the Eiffel Tower that I took while standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower is much more meaningful to me than anything I can look up on line, no matter if there are people in the shot or not, no matter how good the quality of the photo. I was standing right there, behind this photo. That’s what means something to me.
About ten years ago I came across a small keychain photo of a woman who I couldn’t identify. It took me about 5 minutes of staring before I realized it was my ex whom I was with for 10 years and hadn’t seen for over ten. My feeling is if she still had a place in my heart/life, I’d remember what she looked like (I vaguely recall how she looks, but it’s really fuzzy). Same with anyone else who’s not longer in my life.
I agree with Blondbear. I really try to get people OUT of my shots. I’m much more interested in the object I’m photographing, and what it can tell us. Yes, I do take some pics of whomever I’m with, but usually not many.
THIS. Yesterday I attended Barrett-Jackson auto auction, and took about 200 shots (plus 3 movies). I almost always take at least two of everything. I dump the pics into a folder, and delete the poor duplicates and junk. Then I use the remainders for rotating desktop pictures for a week or so. This also helps me cull out the boring shots as they come up for view.
I’ll probably end up with 40 pics out of the 200 I shot yesterday. It always seems to be that about 20% survive.
My approach, as a serious photographer for many years, is to take hundreds of shots, enjoying the process of imagining the different angles, seeing things in multiple ways in my mind, and trying different lenses and apertures.
…then I cull … heavily.
I try to get down to a few dozen. By starting with several hundred shots from a cross country road trip and whittling that down to 35, they all end up being amazing shots. Then I have them printed in a nice bound album.
My favorite exercise was a trip to India with co-workers, where we pooled our photos, eventually ending up with about 1500 shots all together. I got home and culled down to about 40 or 50 amazing shots and had a really neat photo album printed.
People love these albums—nobody wants to sit through a 200 photo slide show, but paging through 20 pages of awesome shots is actually enjoyable.
I have many friends who also have this approach. That’s the approach of a photographer. I’m not a photographer, and the process described above is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.
If you’re into photography, the photographing and editing is an event unto itself and really a big reason why you even go interesting places. You’re there to see the place, and take photos. That’s great for you guys, and I appreciate your efforts, but it’s not for me.
My favorite photos I have taken are a “series” of my wife, from behind, looking out at something spectacular. This one is at Lake McDonald in Glacier Nat’l Park, and this one is in Shenandoah. Those were both buried in albums of hundreds of photos of “stuff,” and are the only ones I actually look at and like. So now I’m just going to snap off one of those, and then I’ll put the camera away and just enjoy myself there.
My wife is from the “a person must be in the photo” school of thought and I am not.
My main complaint is that my wife will want her picture taken standing next to something large, and she will insist that both she and the entire large object have to be equally visible in the shot. This usually entails me squatting uncomfortably on the ground and shooting the photo at an upwards angle.
