The weeping would be over the fact that since there now are a zillion photographers, the net effect is that photography as a comodity or product is seriously devalued. People become more and more unwilling to hire professionals since they're convinced they could do the job themselves. On 9/21/11, asharpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <asharpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > And 92.683% of statistics are made up. It is rather interesting that the > statement "the 20th century was the golden age of analog photography > peaking at an amazing 85 billion physical photos in 2000" has no > attribution. > > And why should "professionals" "weep" if analog is deprecated? Many > "professionals" already use digital. Indeed, I'll bet many "professionals" > are overjoyed with digital, because it vastly reduces their cost. > > Andrew > > > On Wed, September 21, 2011 4:34 am, John Palcewski 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. >> >> > > >
