Bricklin on Technology

2.2. Photographs

The idea that land and mobile phones would evolve from being business tools to indispensable parts of relating to our friends and loved ones was not obvious at first to many people. Likewise, early photographers probably didn't see how personally taking pictures (as opposed to having professionals create them) would become such an integral part of life.

As an engineer, I often looked at photography in terms of creating the most realistic or aesthetically pleasing images. The unevenly lit and poorly composed photos created by everyday people appeared to me to be somehow lacking, yet they surprisingly seemed of great value to those people. Why take a poor picture when you could buy a professional image of the same scene? It seems related to how our mundane conversations on cell phones should pale in comparison to the professional fare on commercial radio, but instead we pay for the mundane and usually don't for the professional (which needs advertising to survive financially). This essay addresses the evolution of my thoughts on that.

OUR PHOTOS AS AN EDITED RECORD OF OUR LIVES We take pictures for many reasons. Here is one very important one to understand. With the advent of digital cameras and personal web sites, I've returned to my childhood hobby of amateur photography. Writing about different types of pictures for my Web Photo Journals web site[] got me thinking more about the psychological aspects of our relationship with personal photography. Pictures ...