It reminds me of something interesting though: having a phone with a decent camera and an easy upload option has really changed how I take and share pictures.
Back in the dark ages of 2012 and earlier, I'd:
- take pictures on my digital camera
- eventually boot up my laptop (2006 and still working, largely because I don't use it for anything anymore but the occasional print job) (from 2006-2010 or so I'd often have my laptop up and running when I was home from work, but once I got an ipod touch connected to my home wifi network, my laptop time dropped dramatically)
- pull the memory card from the phone and insert it into my computer
- copy all the pictures onto my hard drive
- spend some time ruthlessly culling only the best pictures ("best" being a bit generous, but not for me ten pictures of essentially the same thing)
- use software to add tags and titles and descriptions to all the picture
- upload the pictures to my flickr account
- and finally, delete all the pictures from the memory card and re-insert it into the camera.
Now I've got a camera with me at all times, but I don't spend much time at all with metadata or deletion. I never understood how people would have reams of pictures on their phones, and yet here I am with 1,073 after nine months of owning my smart phone.
I do still upload things to flickr, but I have to remember to go in after the fact to cull and to add metadata and create albums. I email and text pictures more easily, but any photographic skill I had is atrophying.
Some of the history of the building and how its artist tenants worked with the city to pioneer legal use of industrial buildings for artist - click to read, it's fascinating!
I got to spend some time in an early 1920s industrial building yesterday, and was so glad I had the camera on my phone, yet wished for a great camera and better light. On balance, I think I'll take what I have now - and it IS one less thing to have to back up!
