In this left picture of Ryan and Teresa Valdez Klein, I upload photos (GPS tagged with location and time) in real time from my mobile phone using Shozu, and share it with my network on Flickr, Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, and now my blog.
Like some of you, I’m still fascinated how digital natives interpret media, communications compared to boomers. Me? I’m in the middle watching it all go down.
Just a few days ago, I compared who had more data about my friend Teresa Valdez Klein, Facebook or the US Government. In the comments, it was almost unanimously the US Government, although interestingly enough, most of the data about her in Facebook is opt-in, rather opt-out.
Do you remember the days of taking your black physical rolls of film to Longs or CVS, waiting a few days or hours to get them developed? There were always risks: hoping we didn’t get an over exposed photo, losing the roll in one’s purse or backpack, or forgetting to pick them up all together? For generation Y, that’s no longer a problem.
Take for example in my recent lunch with Teresa (interestingly I found out that she was in NY the same time I was via Friendfeed) she mentioned her younger siblings were growing up in a world where photos were published instantly to the web from mobile devices –this is a native activity to them.
I spoke with my trusted confidant Jennifer Jones (host of Marketing Voices Podcst) yesterday, when it comes to pictures, her son lives in the digital world. I’ve been to Jennifer’s beautiful home, which has nicely framed pictures of the family and kids from all stages of their life. Like any good mother, Jennifer offered her son to take framed family photos off to college. While it’s often un-cool for any kid to take family photos to college, his honest retort was “I don’t need to Mom, I have Facebook”.
He went on to explain that Facebook photos were more current and ‘real’. I’d add that those photos can be transplanted wherever her son goes, as long as he has access to the internet. Furthermore, they are social objects and assets that are being shared in the nexus of his network, perhaps far more valuable location than ‘on the shelf’.
We start to see a connection of the physical and digital universe. At first positioned as ‘executive desk’ gadgets, the Digital Frame continues to get more popular. I personally have no desire for it, and would only accept it as a gift, never buy it. A few reasons,, to me my sharing is on the web, which I can access from my mobile phone. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of these devices is that many are not internet devices, and a majority of them require physical storage changes –what a hassle.
So where are you when it comes to photos?
Print or Digital? Instant or Later? Online or Framed? Self Contained or Shared Online? Doubles/Glossy/Matte, or JPEG?
I still print photos, but only the really good ones.
Recently I found my old film camera, and it still has a half-used roll of film in it. I haven’t tried to develop them yet, but it did remind me of the pleasant surprise of getting back a great photo from a moment you had forgotten all about!
good points, but how about “and” rather than “or?” Print *and* digital; online *and* off.
personal example: my wife and I both have digital cameras and we take tons of pics. we store/share them on our computers, on facebook, flickr, etc. but we archive them too: my wife uploads pics to the local camera shop’s server to get physical prints and then creates scrapbooks; I back up our memories by burning the files to a DVD every month or so.
I’m Gen X too, and I have to say I love the digital photography transformation. I take quite a few pictures on my DSLR and store them on an external drive. I also use my mac to export selected photos to a family website via iWeb and hosted by .mac. I can do this with drag-and-drop features of Aperture, but you can do the same with iPhoto. That said, I also like to print and frame my photos using a semi-pro photo printer.
This is a great time for the amateur photographer; so much power for little investment. This is also causing a real shift in the business, in which skilled amateurs are taking business away from the pros. I’ve recently read in the Photo District News that big stock photo outfits like Getty (and their photogs) are losing business to amateurs and semi-pros who are self-publishing and selling their photos on sites like istockphoto.
Digitals are but snapshots, film with it’s near hundred year history, ain’t dead yet, and will remain the true art. And the Walmartty Print-Out-Digital Kiosks, are always super busy. So for the few actually worth keeping, people still put on paper.