And while I have every negative and transparency I gave ever shot (unless I deliberately got rid of them), keeping your digital files is a lot more time-consuming and expensive no matter how easy it is yo create them. I predict that even though digital is easier (but more expensive) to shoot on the front side, the backside risks will mean that 100 years from now all you'll be able to see of my work is the analog. The digital won't last! Sent from my iPhone On Sep 21, 2011, at 7:34 AM, John Palcewski <palcewski@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The article below (linked on The Dish by Andrew Sullivan), says every > 2 minutes today we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity took > in the 1800s. In fact, ten percent of all the photos that exist were > taken in the past 12 months. > > Also, it's clear analog images are virtually dead, and the competition > is growing at a rate that defies quantification. Read it and weep, > professionals! > > Text and link below. > > How many photos have ever been taken? > By Jonathan Good September 15, 2011 > > http://bit.ly/qkKZ3c > > Today we take photos for granted. They are our memories of holidays > and parties, of people and places. An explosion of cameras and places > to share them (Facebook, twitter, instagram) means that our lives > today are documented, not by an occasional oxidizing of silver halide > but constantly recorded with GPS coordinates and time stamps. However > it hasn't always been like this - the oldest photograph is less than > 200 years old[1]. > > So how many "Kodak memories" has humanity recorded? How fast are we > snapping photos today? And how many of these treasured memories are > confined to our shoeboxes as lost relics of a pre-digital era? > > > First we quantify how many analog photos humans have taken. There is a > surprising dearth of direct data, but we can make some reasonable > estimates. It is safe to say that at most a few million photos were > snapped before the invention of the first consumer camera - Kodak > Brownie in 1901[2]. From that time we can use Kodak's employment > statistics as a reasonable proxy for how many photos were taken > (Kodak’s dominance of those "Kodak moments" persisted for most of the > 20th century). More physical photos needed more physical cameras and > rolls of print[3]. Throughout this period photos became more and more > mass-market - by 1960 it is estimated that 55% of photos were of > babies. From 1984 onwards the Silver Institute and PMIA published > estimates of how many physical photos the world was snapping each year > (silver halide being an important chemical in film)[4]. Year after > year these numbers grew, as more people took more photos - the 20th > century was the golden age of analog photography peaking at an amazing > 85 billion physical photos in 2000 -- an incredible 2,500 photos per > second. > > > At the dawn of the new millennium a new technology (that Kodak itself > invented) was reshaping the whole industry - the digital photo. When > the first few hundred thousand digital cameras shipped in 1997 their > memory was strictly limited (in fact cameras like the Sony Mavica took > floppy disks[5]!). Digital cameras are now ubiquitous - it is > estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital > camera[6]. If the average person snaps 150 photos this year that would > be a staggering 375 billion photos. That might sound implausible but > this year people will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook, > suggesting around 20% of all photos this year will end up there[7]. > Already Facebook’s photo collection has a staggering 140 billion > photos, that’s over 10,000 times larger than the Library of > Congress.[8] > > > Even accounting for population growth the exponential growth of photos > is incredible (we take 4 times as many photos as 10 year ago). Today > every party, birthday, sports game and concert is documented in rich > detail. The combination of all these photos is a rich portrait of > today, the possibilities of which are illustrated by a tool like “The > Moment”. As photos keep growing we take a clearer and clearer snapshot > of our lives and world today - in total we have now taken over 3.5 > trillion photos. The kind of photos we are taking has changed > drastically - analog photos have almost disappeared - but the growth > of photos continues. >
