billions of photos uploaded daily

uniondale · Nov 18, 2015

For some reason, this whole idea of "billions of photos uploaded daily" gets on my nerves. I wrote the following in another post, but thought I would post a thread about this idea.

Regarding the GWC syndrome (guys with cameras), I find the majority of photography online is very uninspiring and technically lacking...composition as well as photo technique. There are a huge numbers of "lucky shots" that, when you go to see the body of work, are just not representative.

There have always been millions and billions of photos in the world. It is just, with the Internet, like everyone got a chance to take their old shoe box of snapshots from the closet and dump them out for everyone to see.

For me, the idea of billions of photos is one of these "geez whiz, isn't technology amazing" ideas that people trot out to confound one another.

An additional point is that photography is just a tool for communication, like writing. Billions of posts and trillions of words are written daily, but we still have the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books going strong celebrating great writing.

blansky · Nov 18, 2015

Can you clarify your point.

Because it isn't the fact that there have always been billions of words or billions of photographs taken, the facts today is that billions are in fact seen.

And it's the seeing that changed the landscape not the taking.

pdeeh · Nov 18, 2015

I think the point is probably something like "The modern world is just awful"

MartinCrabtree · Nov 18, 2015

Eh.......too jaded to care. If the data is correct they'll be vapor in 20 years.

Sirius Glass · Nov 18, 2015

The posting and storage of useless photographs will continue to increase until the entropy is so large that the universe will explode. Wait, that all ready happened. Now we know how this universe came to be.

NedL · Nov 18, 2015

The process I'm most interested in right now takes a minimum of 6 days from start to taking the photo to finished print.
At that rate it will take me over 450 thousand years to make 1 billion photos. I'd happily settle for 1 to 5 really good ones per year.

You are complaining about composition, and here's Blansky contributing to this thread... I'm home today not feeling very well after a surgery and something he said the other day got me moving to learn about design and composition more from the artist's point of view. I've been reading The Eye of the Painter by Andrew Loomis all morning and am finding it very interesting...

darkosaric · Nov 18, 2015

uniondale said:
"billions of photos uploaded daily"

My question is: how many photos are printed daily? That is what counts. For me it is not over until you have the print.

bvy · Nov 18, 2015

> There have always been millions and billions of photos in the world. It is just, with the Internet, like everyone got a chance to take their old shoe box of snapshots from the closet and dump them out for everyone to see.

There's more to it than that. Who in the golden days of film ever felt compelled to photograph a plate of food and send copies to all their friends? More is less.

skorpiius · Nov 18, 2015

Seems like if there are an enormous amount of terrible photos being produced, then us pros should have no problem cleaning up with our superior work

Dr Croubie · Nov 18, 2015

uniondale said:
An additional point is that photography is just a tool for communication, like writing.

"The proliferation of mass graphomania among politicians, cab drivers, women on the delivery table, mistresses, murderers, criminals, prostitutes, police chiefs, doctors, and patients proves to me that every individual without exception bears a potential writer within himself and that all mankind has every right to rush out into the streets with a cry of "We are all writers!"
The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late.
Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding."

Milan Kundera wrote that in 1979, and it's what I always quote whenever someone wants (or doesn't want) my opinion on things like twitter.
Why should photography be any different? Everyone wants their 5 seconds of fame...

Maris · Nov 18, 2015

"billions of pictures uploaded daily" is more like what happens. Within the clear air of APUG and in the interests of plain semantic accuracy I'll insist that photographs are pictures made out of light-sensitive materials. In these times newly made photographs are comparatively rare. Photographs aside, everything else is just pictures...of one kind or another. And there's billions of them.

Gerald C Koch · Nov 18, 2015

The statistic is as meaningless as are the vast majority of the billions of photographs.

hoffy · Nov 18, 2015

OK, mind the profanity, but who really gives a shit!

Seriously, people share photos for many reasons and I would suggest the biggest reason is to share moments with friends. Most people really don't care about lighting or composition or what gear they have used to take the photo with. They simply are posting to share. I do it and I suspect quite a few others on this forum do it. I even posted photos of my lunch last week, simply because I was in Japan and was being served meals that I and my friends normally don't see. The funny thing is that some people even liked what I posted and one even commented to me face to face this week.

I think a lot of us seem to turn every photo that we take into the worlds greatest photograph and tend to think that our shit doesn't stink when it comes to photography, where's in reality for the remainder of the world, photography is simply a way to capture moments in time - dare I say, snapshots even. If you don't want to look at the snapshots, then don't. Its really quite easy.

This forum is really turning into "Grumpy Old Men"....

PS, Iluvmycam, do you actually ever make a post where you don't link back to your blog?

removed account4 · Nov 18, 2015

bvy said:
> Who in the golden days of film ever felt compelled to photograph a plate of food and send copies to all their friends? More is less.

i have friends who have been doing that for more than 2o years, and they used to get the photos back from the lab and show them or mail them to friends and family ...
no different than today ...

--

i don't really care if there are billions and billoins or trillions or trillions
i think it is great, people are seeing and making photographs of things they like to see
and sharing their eyes with the world.
maybe if people spent more time seeing, and photographing and helping and being more humane
there would be less hellishness...

bvy · Nov 18, 2015

jnanian said:
i have friends who have been doing that for more than 2o years, and they used to get the photos back from the lab and show them or mail them to friends and family ...
no different than today ...

I'm not convinced. Today, everyone has a phone with them everywhere. My kids (19) take more pictures in a day than I took in a month at their age. Things once thought interesting or amusing when seen in passing now get photographed to death and posted instantly to social media. It's overwhelming. You're right insofar as taking and sharing pictures is nothing new. But receiving a package of photos in the mail was a very personal gesture, and even slideshows were occasions to get people together in the same room. If your friends were regularly mass mailing pictures of their restaurant meals (one example) to everyone they knew -- well, maybe they were just ahead of their time. I still say it was much different than today.

Nige · Nov 18, 2015

Read this in a photography history type book the other day. So huge Facebook 'friends' lists ain't a new thing along with the billions of photos to go with them. On a serious note, I don't care what's uploaded, I don't look.

railwayman3 · Nov 18, 2015

Doesn't matter to me.

In my earlier days of photography I enthusiastically took dozens of pictures of everything which caught my eye, and most of them went nowhere! Now I take much fewer analog pics (I can carry gadget bag and tripod around all day and take nothing if I don't feel the results will be good enough), and, if I get a dozen a year really good ones (at least good, IMHO!) to put on the wall or in a folio, I'm happy.

Digital is kept for family pics, or if I need a quick record of something or some scene just for my own interest. The better family ones are printed for an album, most of the others are deleted when they have served their purpose.

bobwysiwyg · Nov 18, 2015

Sometimes change is difficult to accept. I'm sure painters had a few choice words for early photographers. My parents resented The Beatles who they assured me would lead to my moral demise. Life marches on.

RobC · Nov 18, 2015

bobwysiwyg said:
Sometimes change is difficult to accept. I'm sure painters had a few choice words for early photographers. My parents resented The Beatles who they assured me would lead to my moral demise. Life marches on.

Did it?

removed account4 · Nov 18, 2015

bvy said:
I'm not convinced. Today, everyone has a phone with them everywhere. My kids (19) take more pictures in a day than I took in a month at their age. Things once thought interesting or amusing when seen in passing now get photographed to death and posted instantly to social media. It's overwhelming. You're right insofar as taking and sharing pictures is nothing new. But receiving a package of photos in the mail was a very personal gesture, and even slideshows were occasions to get people together in the same room. If your friends were regularly mass mailing pictures of their restaurant meals (one example) to everyone they knew -- well, maybe they were just ahead of their time. I still say it was much different than today.

it's all got to do,with the Truman show, everyone wants to be in it, everyone
wants their 15 mins I mean 15 sec of fame.
I'm not on fb, haven't been for maybe 5 maybe 7 years so I don't see most of the
rubbish people complain about. as for your kids or people in general taking pictures ..
who cares .. it doesn't seem like they are hurting anyone with their self love .
besides most of the food photos I see make their food look like a chill is ad.. ( very unappetizing )!
like most people who fail to understand the basic rules of composition, they fail to let their subject breathe ...

and more power to'em ... I hope the Internet gets clogged with so many photos by cellphone and
ready upload from my unedited stream of my life photos the Internet just stops dead ... I'd love that ...

blansky · Nov 18, 2015

GET OFF WHAT USED TO BE MY LAWN.

Pioneer · Nov 18, 2015

I think you are all full of BS.

The fact that so many people can communicate with their images (photographs or pictures??) is amazing. It has quite literally changed our world and will continue to do so.

I do not know where this will take us, but we are all along for the ride whether we like it or not. Every now and then I cruise Flikr for images associated with certain topics. Not because I think that what I see is so wonderful, but having so many ideas on how people look at a given topic is great. It never fails to motivate me and give me some great ideas on how to approach composition.

Sure, there may be 1,000 or more images of yellow roses that are taken from the same perspective and with almost identical lighting. But even that is instructive. How many times have I photographed things using the same boring approach and composition. Maybe I need to take my next flower picture on my back looking at the sky!!

This is photography for a billion people. They are not trying to be pros. They are not trying to sell 20x30 framed photographs in a gallery. They are sharing and communicating with each other. They have no intention to hurt you. To be honest, I doubt that the great majority even care whether you or I like it or not.

uniondale · Nov 18, 2015

blansky said:
Can you clarify your point.

Because it isn't the fact that there have always been billions of words or billions of photographs taken, the facts today is that billions are in fact seen.

And it's the seeing that changed the landscape not the taking.

Well, my point is people have always been photo-happy. But, before they stored them in shoe boxes and now they are out there on the Internet. So, there have always been a huge number of photos in the world, it is just now they are one click away. I'm not passing a value judgement on that. I think it's great that everyone loves taking photos!

Moving on, and this is my point...I don't think this is new and I don't think it devalues photography as an art form. But, I think the tech world likes to make a big deal about this. There have always been enough snapshots in the world to build a bridge to the moon, only now they are all one click away.

And then, finally, it is just liking writing. Now everyone and his dog has a blog. But, that does not devalue novels as an art form...I think it is same thing.

hoffy · Nov 18, 2015

Pioneer said:
I think you are all full of BS.

The fact that so many people can communicate with their images (photographs or pictures??) is amazing. It has quite literally changed our world and will continue to do so.

I do not know where this will take us, but we are all along for the ride whether we like it or not. Every now and then I cruise Flikr for images associated with certain topics. Not because I think that what I see is so wonderful, but having so many ideas on how people look at a given topic is great. It never fails to motivate me and give me some great ideas on how to approach composition.

Sure, there may be 1,000 or more images of yellow roses that are taken from the same perspective and with almost identical lighting. But even that is instructive. How many times have I photographed things using the same boring approach and composition. Maybe I need to take my next flower picture on my back looking at the sky!!

This is photography for a billion people. They are not trying to be pros. They are not trying to sell 20x30 framed photographs in a gallery. They are sharing and communicating with each other. They have no intention to hurt you. To be honest, I doubt that the great majority even care whether you or I like it or not.

OK, where is the thumbs up emoticon! Well put.

uniondale · Nov 18, 2015

Nige said:
Read this in a photography history type book the other day.

I think this is perfect...nothing is ever really new, it just keeps coming back in different forms.

billions of photos uploaded daily

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