The life of a Digital Photograph
Photograph: An instant captured in frame. The intent, driven by emotional intensities of memory, attraction and documentation, often added with an intent of commercial benefit. It’s created with a camera and the person in charge will often be called a photographer.
I once called the drawings on ancient caves photographs. I think I was right.
Man is a visual animal. Images are more impactful in any form may it be advertising, inspiration, entertainment or pleasure. With the dawn of the twenty-first century, photographs came to the mass. Films started becoming cheaper and digital photography made the mass creation and consumption of photography possible.
Digital photography with the high pixel and the digital editing gives toughest competition to the eyes. I clicked a few million pictures after I got my first digital camera in 2008, and the first mobile camera sometime before that. I have gathered a millions of pictures over the years. As they lay in various places, I wonder about each of those clicks.
And have come to believe in the eight stages in the life of a digital photograph:
- Intention: When you take out a camera out of your pocket and click the food you just ate. I call this Pre-Birth
- Existence: A picture may be deleted within a second of its existence or kept hidden in your inboxes draft. I call it Being the Photograph.
- Showcase: Displaying your picture with the leaning tower on your handy device or app.Other way- Flaunting.
- Publish: Making it widely known about the existence of such a picture in the mass outreach via social.The Promulgation.
- Print: Harming the environment with your instant pictures or photo accessories. The Hard Copy.
- Storage: Backing up the backups on those ugly hard drives. The Cache
- History: Scrolling through your photo app to dig out the decade old picture. The Stockpile.
- Archive: Setting your scandalous pictures aside to use/reuse them whenever necessary. The Jackpot.
Lately I have come to believe that a photograph never dies.
If you are reading this, you probably own a smartphone. Very weak analogy but I am sure I will be mostly correct.
