Snapshot-less photography

Another invited post. This post is from Phil McCoog, Chief Technologist for HP’s Digital Photography business. There are a lot of touch points for HP in Digital Photography: online services, retail photo solutions, home and professional printers, cameras. Phil’s role is to understand the integration of these assets. In my job, I do meet a lot of interesting people. When I get an insightful answer to a simple question it makes me think. The simple question I asked Phil was “what does Digital Photography mean to you now?” Phil’s answer was that the explosive growth and future of photography is in the combination of personal, community, and professional content that is professionally fulfilled. For Phil, the photography part of “digital photography” is where change is happening now. It’s a new creative medium, not just a way to capture a snapshot. I can see that. After all, YouTube did not end up being the place we store traditional home videos. Instead, it became a new publishing and expression medium. Could the same happen to photography?

I said, interesting, but this answer needs more explanation. I decided to share it with you here.

Phil McCoog on Snapshot-less photography

Prior to digital, photography was about capturing your memories by preserving pictures you took. These pictures were almost always professionally developed. Sometimes, but not as often as we would like, those photos were put into an album. All artistry was at the time of the photo - i.e. getting the right framing and composition. Film came in rolls of 12, 24, and 36. When we took pictures we were always aware of how many pictures we had left in the roll. Pictures were not to be "wasted".

Then came digital. It was a revolution. We are free to take all the pictures we want - there is no cost to capturing the image and most memory cards are virtually unlimited for any single event. We can fix zooming and cropping later. There is also a freedom of how to experience these photos. We can print them via mail order, at home, or at retail. We can share them electronically. But at the end of the day, the digital photography revolution, so far, has made it cheaper and easier for us to share snapshots. The medium of exchange is still a series of pictures. The main revolution was the introduction of digital. The only real casualty of this revolution, besides a company or two, was the viewfinder and it has virtually disappeared without us noticing and without much fanfare.

The explosive growth that is brewing in digital photography is more in the photography part than the digital part. Of course I believe the output and medium will continue to be digital, but users will have new ways of using their photos. Users can now combine their personal images and professional content into a whole new output medium. I am using the term "professional" very loosely here. As any web 2.0 guru will tell you, the line between professional and everyday web contributor are blurring. A more accurate term might be web available content. This content might "stock" photos, Flickr photos, maps, or other web images. It might be prose grabbed from the web - maybe even from a blog. It might be creative artwork. It might be a creative project template for output such as photobooks or holiday cards. The revolution is how do we take this wealth of content and make it into a new artifact. Forward looking mail order and retail photo centers are already installing a whole new breadth of equipment that allow us to explode out of the snapshot paradigm. Sometime in the not so distant future I expect to be writing a blog about how the snapshot went out "not with a bang, but with a whimper". However much like the "paper-less office" revolution didn't result in the end of printing and in fact caused an explosion in printing, the "snapshot-less photography" revolution won't mean the end of printing photos, but should result in the explosive growth of producing photography treasures to be part of our everyday life. What web content do you see as the important content for enhancing your digital pictures into amazing output? What form do you imagine that output taking? What have seen that really wows you?