wacky wednesday - is more better?

Digital cameras and smartphones completely changed the way we view personal photography - everything from how many photos we snap to what we photograph and even how we store our photos.

The advent of the "selfie" dramatically increased the number of photos being taken every day. Researchers estimate more than 93 million selfies are taken every day. (And in case you're interested, the Philippines is the selfie capital of the world.) FaceBook claims more than 350 million photos are uploaded to their site every day. Estimates for the total number of photos taken in 2014 range from 880 BILLION to one TRILLION! That's about a quarter of the total number of photos taken EVER.

Personally, I went from shooting two 24-exposure rolls of film on a one week vacation to shooting over 1000 images on a similar one week vacation. It cost no more to shoot 1000 images than it did to shoot 48 and the likelihood of getting a great shot dramatically increased. Of course, it also means I have OVER ONE THOUSAND vacation photos to sort through on my computer before I print any.

Film and developing were costly so I used to really think about whether or not I wanted to take a particular photo. I would get irritated with my kids if they were being goofy and I wanted a serious shot. I seldom took photos just to capture our everyday life; they were more event related like a birthday or holiday or the first day of school. Now I shoot more "frivolous" photos - things like the Dole Whip we had at Disneyland or people I don't even know doing stupid things at national parks. I experiment more, trying new things just to see if I can figure them out or if they will work. And I always get the goofy shots!

Boxes. That's where I used to store my prints after I got my film developed until I had time to put them in scrapbooks. And I kept my negatives at someone else's house so a fire wouldn't destroy everything. Now, my digital images are stored on my hard drive and an external drive. And I have several backups. I'm not sure which is better. The digital images take up waaaaaay less room but out of sight is also out of mind. I find I print fewer photos and it's easier to put off scrapbooking them. Having a limited amount of physical space to store photos made me stay more current with putting them in scrapbooks, swapping out photos in frames and discarding the ones I didn't want to keep.

So, is more really better? Ummmm. Yes. And no. Or maybe it's just different now.