Remember the snapshot? I do. I’ve got a bunch of little square photos taken 40 years ago of me as kid. I have photos taken 20 years ago of me in college. They are not fancy photos, but the images share a common “snapshot” quality to them. Now along comes digital and people are snapping photos a mile a minute, capturing pointless minutia, and too many buttcracks. If I’m going to take a picture of my ass, I’m going to at least put the camera on timer, set in on a rock, take a step or two back, and hope for the best. I really don’t think you should be able to take a picture of yourself without letting go of the camera. I really hate those shots of someone’s entire head in the frame because their arm extends only so far! What ever happened to asking a stranger to “take my picture.”?
If I designed a digital camera, I’d make it smart enough to stop all the dumb ass photos people take. Even if it’s a snapshot, it should be taken with care and with respect for photography. Even when we had disposable cameras, it didn’t mean that we had disposable images.
So yeah, I’m a bit of a snob about this, and I’m not sayin’ that I don’t take lousy photos, bit I do think about what I’m doing, and I do care about every snap.
