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I used to care about my photos a lot. After accumulating a few decades worth of photos I've gotten to the point where I don't care about my photos at all. I us

I used to care about my photos a lot. After accumulating a few decades worth of photos I've gotten to the point where I don't care about my photos at all. I used to obsess over megapixel count, portrait mode, FPS, lighting, and so forth, because I used to think that these amazing images would be priceless in the future. Well, the future came and went, and to me they actually ended up being worthless. At one time I cared about other people on the Internet seeing pictures of me and my friends and family doing things and being places. Now I don't want anyone on the Internet seeing pictures like that. I especially don't want bots to scrape the photos to build a dossier on my activities that data brokers can add to my profile that they then turn around and sell to whoever's buying. So these days I don't ever bother even taking photos of anything any more. Instead what I do is try to be 100% "in the moment." I try to notice the small details, feel the emotions, immerse myself in the experience. I look for the things that make an impression. I find that a camera will always -- I mean, always -- detract from that. I suppose that's my way of saying that there hasn't been a camera feature for a phone that I've cared about for many years now. For me the 2017 Pixel 2 was the point where phone camera technology got "good enough" for anything I ever wanted to use it for. Which, these days, is almost nothing.

benoau 2y ago
Really interesting observation, but I would say there are still moments that can delight like we restored an old iPhone of my partner's and came across videos and live photos of our oldest when they were a toddler. Whether this is actually worth the many, many thousands we have spent on our smartphones to preserve rare moments that matter amongst many that really don't is another question. If smartphones never had cameras at all we'd almost certainly preference our own "lower resolution" memories over carrying a small, cheap, lightweight digital camera everywhere in case of something special.
- ip26 2y ago
  It’s not even about terribly special moments. Stitched together, those videos and Live Photos of even small moments help me remember what they were like then.
- hug 2y ago
  This comment seems completely at odds with history and how people actually acted prior to the smartphone revolution. Film camera sales proceeded on a steady incline from their invention until the introduction of the digital camera. Digital camera sales increased year on year for every year of their existence prior to the introduction of the smartphone. Approximately everybody wants to have photos of their precious memories, and the idea that people wouldn't have kept buying digital cameras if smartphones didn't incorporate them is, to be frank, a little bit silly. The primary difference between digital cameras and smartphones was that every family I knew had a digital camera, where every person I know has a smartphone. And every single person I know uses the camera on their smartphone very regularly.
  - benoau 2y ago
    > Approximately everybody wants to have photos of their precious memories I guess the idea is all your memories are precious. What the parent poster said certainly resonated with me: most of them are not. Writing is also a big part of history, which also gave us the ability to preserve our most special events since over 6,000+ years ago. This is the first century that isn't permeated with unknowns because few made any deliberate attempt to record things - and we had the option to paint on a cave wall for 10,000s of years before that too.
    - hug 2y ago
      That's not my point at all. My point is rather more mundane than that: People like cameras and taking photos. That's why they kept buying them as standalone devices until smartphones were good enough to replace having a standalone camera. If the king of the universe suddenly decreed cameras on phones verboten, people would go back to buying standalone cameras, not back to floral written descriptions, commissioning a portrait on canvas, or cave paintings.
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    > The primary difference between digital cameras and smartphones was that every family I knew had a digital camera, where every person I know has a smartphone The real difference is the rise of social media. Digital camera photos were taken for you, for your family and close friends. In the post-facebook world we live in now, smartphone photos are taken for other people - a curated snapshot of your life to show off to acquaintences and strangers. Something of the intimacy of photography has been lost.
- lobochrome 2y ago
  Yeah agreed kids are the difference. Everything else is either dabbling in being an artist - which most people are not - or noise.
- Shawnj2 2y ago
  Honestly I just have an RX100, physics means that it will always be able to take optically better photos than an iPhone even though the post processing is definitely “worse”. It fits in my pocket just as easily as a phone and I can take both normal photos and selfies pretty easily. It’s not the cheapest option but I appreciate having better image quality in a form factor I can easily shove in my pocket.
  - vladvasiliu 2y ago
    > It fits in my pocket just as easily as a phone What kind of pants do you wear? Or are you in one of those locales where you have a coat on year-round? Asking because my iphone barely fits in my jeans pockets. I'm a dude, so I still have somewhat usable pockets.
j_crick 2y ago
For that reason, I bought some Fuji X100 and just take pictures with it if I need, for at least it's a fun exercise for actually thinking about what exactly do I really want to capture and why.
technojunkie 2y ago
I could have written all of this myself. It exactly mirrors how I progressed to the same conclusions. Very well said!
hu3 2y ago
I went the opposite way. I used to not take photos because I never went back to see them. And even if I did, one the best moments to review THAT photo is when I am talking to someone else about a related memory. Now with Google photos, if we are talking about that one time when I was a kid driving a tractor, I search for tractor in photos app and presto, like magic the conversation about that memory has a nostalgic photo to boost the moment. Family loves it!
1123581321 2y ago
When you get older, the photos aren’t for you, they’re for the descendants of you and your siblings, and their communities during funerals etc. It sounds like you needed a healthy correction from too much sharing and organizing, but just a few shots will be treasured.
- rolisz 2y ago
  Come on, my grandkids won't sift through 200GB of photos. They'll look at 10-100 at most and then get bored.
  - kshacker 2y ago
    AI will do it for them.
    - cstrat 2y ago
      You can already see this in action - I love when my iPhone brings up those little curated albums from events or people. I can only imagine how much better those will become with more and more photos and better intelligence.
      - dleink 2y ago
        Here's what grandpa and your uncle did 60 years today!
        joshstrange 2y ago
        I don’t know if you’re joking or being serious but I think that would be really cool.
        arrowleaf 2y ago
        I would absolutely love this!
  - disiplus 2y ago
csomar 2y ago
This has nothing to do with the iPhone and more with your social life. You went from a pro social network stance to a pro privacy one. That change meant you are taking less photos. This is not happening in the real world, though. Everyone is on tiktok today and they need these powerful cameras more than ever.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
nemo1618 2y ago
These days, most of the photos I take are with disposable cameras that I buy whenever I go on a trip. Despite the name, the high cost of the camera makes each shot more precious, and I much prefer the low-fi film grain style to whatever black magic is going on in my smartphone sensor. Also, the novelty/nostalgia makes people smile when you ask them to take a picture of you. And then there's the anticipation of sending the film off for development, not knowing what will turn out well and what will be an underexposed mess. Highly recommended.
Mistletoe 2y ago
I feel this but I also just google photos and it will show me slideshows from trips or moments in my life in the past and I'm like wow I forgot about that wonderful moment. Please keep photographing.
dleink 2y ago
I don't take pictures for the internet, I take them for the memories and to try to add a little artistry to the things in my life. I also think cameras can be a positive part of "the moment" wherever that is. Photography and dealing with a camera can be a meditative way to see reality.
lm28469 2y ago
Ironically the only photos I connect with are the ones I took (and I'm still taking) with my dad's 35mm slr from the 80s. It's the one he used to take all my childhood pictures and I'm confident I will be able to take pics of my kid(s) with it. I shoot maybe one roll of film a month on average, so about 400 pics a year, 1/10th are keepers, that's 40 good pics per year and I remember where I took every single one of them since I started this in 2018.
- uneoneuno 2y ago
  I got a crappy 25 year old Kodak that takes 110 cartridge film at a thrift store for $5. Those 24 pictures seem more real than the 1000's on my phone. Remembering where you take them is cool
jajko 2y ago
You don't have kids then, at least no in kids age. I did first part of the curve like you - full frame nikon, amazing photos, milky way in the night camping etc. Now I just carry around phone (Samsung in my case, use that 10x physical zoom quite a bit). The stuff I can snap or record, most of it would be uncatchable with camera - I would have to run around with it constantly like an idiot and shove it in everybody's face, missing much more from those unique moments. Its not so much for me but for everybody else not being there, ie grandparents, so the question is - do you care more about you being in the moment, or sharing the moment with your closest ones. Its amazing how better connected they are with whats happening to their grandchildren living not so close to them, compared to a generation ago. Also, how much of these memories our kids will have once adults - 'you know, daddy wanted to be in the moment so sorry not many photos or videos from important moments of your childhood' is pretty lame to me, but thats me. I still see purpose of photography as service to others rather than me, me and me all the way down. Since kids are so active, there are some cool things like very slow mo videos that give completely new perspective - process it in 30s if needed at all and share. Completely unavailable even in current 5000$+ cameras. And yes on big screen you see various errors and less quality, but nobody I know watches it on big screens anymore.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
chongli 2y ago
Honestly, the more photos I take with my phone, the more I find myself craving a film camera. It's not just the look of film which I find more appealing than digital photos, the physicality of the whole thing. Operating a film camera (especially older ones like Leica rangefinders or large format view cameras) is a very hands-on and deliberate process. You don't take a photo with an old camera, you make a photo. This means you need to spend a lot more time composing the shot, focusing on the subject, metering the light (or using the zone system [1] if you want to go really old-school), setting the lens aperture and shutter speed, and finally taking the picture. In the case of a large format camera, you find yourself ducking under a dark cloth and focusing the (upside-down) image on a piece of ground glass, even using a magnifying glass for critical focusing! The deliberate process doesn't stop with exposing the image. It continues into the dark room with creative control over the development and printing processes. From a single negative you can spend hours making test prints and playing with the exposure of the final print, using techniques such as dodging, burning, and masking. You can also do some crazy things with an enlarger; even producing wall-sized prints at home!
barnabee 2y ago
I haven’t cared about megapixels for a long time. My “real” camera is a decade old and has just a 16 megapixel sensor. With the right lens(es) it still destroys every iPhone. I don’t see myself getting rid of it for a phone camera any time soon. If anything, I feel the opposite and want my camera with me (rather than just my phone) more of the time. That said, I also still take loads of photos on my phone and look forward to that camera becoming more capable. And I completely hear and am on board with the argument about enjoying things in the moment and not getting stuck behind a camera, or worse, obsessing over posting to social media. Everything in moderation, I suppose.

benoau 2y ago

Really interesting observation, but I would say there are still moments that can delight like we restored an old iPhone of my partner's and came across videos and live photos of our oldest when they were a toddler. Whether this is actually worth the many, many thousands we have spent on our smartphones to preserve rare moments that matter amongst many that really don't is another question. If smartphones never had cameras at all we'd almost certainly preference our own "lower resolution" memories over carrying a small, cheap, lightweight digital camera everywhere in case of something special.

ip26 2y ago
It’s not even about terribly special moments. Stitched together, those videos and Live Photos of even small moments help me remember what they were like then.
hug 2y ago
This comment seems completely at odds with history and how people actually acted prior to the smartphone revolution. Film camera sales proceeded on a steady incline from their invention until the introduction of the digital camera. Digital camera sales increased year on year for every year of their existence prior to the introduction of the smartphone. Approximately everybody wants to have photos of their precious memories, and the idea that people wouldn't have kept buying digital cameras if smartphones didn't incorporate them is, to be frank, a little bit silly. The primary difference between digital cameras and smartphones was that every family I knew had a digital camera, where every person I know has a smartphone. And every single person I know uses the camera on their smartphone very regularly.
- benoau 2y ago
  > Approximately everybody wants to have photos of their precious memories I guess the idea is all your memories are precious. What the parent poster said certainly resonated with me: most of them are not. Writing is also a big part of history, which also gave us the ability to preserve our most special events since over 6,000+ years ago. This is the first century that isn't permeated with unknowns because few made any deliberate attempt to record things - and we had the option to paint on a cave wall for 10,000s of years before that too.
  - hug 2y ago
    That's not my point at all. My point is rather more mundane than that: People like cameras and taking photos. That's why they kept buying them as standalone devices until smartphones were good enough to replace having a standalone camera. If the king of the universe suddenly decreed cameras on phones verboten, people would go back to buying standalone cameras, not back to floral written descriptions, commissioning a portrait on canvas, or cave paintings.
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  > The primary difference between digital cameras and smartphones was that every family I knew had a digital camera, where every person I know has a smartphone The real difference is the rise of social media. Digital camera photos were taken for you, for your family and close friends. In the post-facebook world we live in now, smartphone photos are taken for other people - a curated snapshot of your life to show off to acquaintences and strangers. Something of the intimacy of photography has been lost.
lobochrome 2y ago
Yeah agreed kids are the difference. Everything else is either dabbling in being an artist - which most people are not - or noise.
Shawnj2 2y ago
Honestly I just have an RX100, physics means that it will always be able to take optically better photos than an iPhone even though the post processing is definitely “worse”. It fits in my pocket just as easily as a phone and I can take both normal photos and selfies pretty easily. It’s not the cheapest option but I appreciate having better image quality in a form factor I can easily shove in my pocket.
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  > It fits in my pocket just as easily as a phone What kind of pants do you wear? Or are you in one of those locales where you have a coat on year-round? Asking because my iphone barely fits in my jeans pockets. I'm a dude, so I still have somewhat usable pockets.

j_crick 2y ago

For that reason, I bought some Fuji X100 and just take pictures with it if I need, for at least it's a fun exercise for actually thinking about what exactly do I really want to capture and why.

technojunkie 2y ago

I could have written all of this myself. It exactly mirrors how I progressed to the same conclusions. Very well said!

hu3 2y ago

I went the opposite way. I used to not take photos because I never went back to see them. And even if I did, one the best moments to review THAT photo is when I am talking to someone else about a related memory. Now with Google photos, if we are talking about that one time when I was a kid driving a tractor, I search for tractor in photos app and presto, like magic the conversation about that memory has a nostalgic photo to boost the moment. Family loves it!

1123581321 2y ago

When you get older, the photos aren’t for you, they’re for the descendants of you and your siblings, and their communities during funerals etc. It sounds like you needed a healthy correction from too much sharing and organizing, but just a few shots will be treasured.

rolisz 2y ago
Come on, my grandkids won't sift through 200GB of photos. They'll look at 10-100 at most and then get bored.
- kshacker 2y ago
  AI will do it for them.
  - cstrat 2y ago
    You can already see this in action - I love when my iPhone brings up those little curated albums from events or people. I can only imagine how much better those will become with more and more photos and better intelligence.
    - dleink 2y ago
      Here's what grandpa and your uncle did 60 years today!
      - joshstrange 2y ago
        I don’t know if you’re joking or being serious but I think that would be really cool.
      - arrowleaf 2y ago
        I would absolutely love this!
- disiplus 2y ago

csomar 2y ago

This has nothing to do with the iPhone and more with your social life. You went from a pro social network stance to a pro privacy one. That change meant you are taking less photos. This is not happening in the real world, though. Everyone is on tiktok today and they need these powerful cameras more than ever.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

nemo1618 2y ago

These days, most of the photos I take are with disposable cameras that I buy whenever I go on a trip. Despite the name, the high cost of the camera makes each shot more precious, and I much prefer the low-fi film grain style to whatever black magic is going on in my smartphone sensor. Also, the novelty/nostalgia makes people smile when you ask them to take a picture of you. And then there's the anticipation of sending the film off for development, not knowing what will turn out well and what will be an underexposed mess. Highly recommended.

Mistletoe 2y ago

I feel this but I also just google photos and it will show me slideshows from trips or moments in my life in the past and I'm like wow I forgot about that wonderful moment. Please keep photographing.

dleink 2y ago

I don't take pictures for the internet, I take them for the memories and to try to add a little artistry to the things in my life. I also think cameras can be a positive part of "the moment" wherever that is. Photography and dealing with a camera can be a meditative way to see reality.

lm28469 2y ago

Ironically the only photos I connect with are the ones I took (and I'm still taking) with my dad's 35mm slr from the 80s. It's the one he used to take all my childhood pictures and I'm confident I will be able to take pics of my kid(s) with it. I shoot maybe one roll of film a month on average, so about 400 pics a year, 1/10th are keepers, that's 40 good pics per year and I remember where I took every single one of them since I started this in 2018.

uneoneuno 2y ago
I got a crappy 25 year old Kodak that takes 110 cartridge film at a thrift store for $5. Those 24 pictures seem more real than the 1000's on my phone. Remembering where you take them is cool

jajko 2y ago

You don't have kids then, at least no in kids age. I did first part of the curve like you - full frame nikon, amazing photos, milky way in the night camping etc. Now I just carry around phone (Samsung in my case, use that 10x physical zoom quite a bit). The stuff I can snap or record, most of it would be uncatchable with camera - I would have to run around with it constantly like an idiot and shove it in everybody's face, missing much more from those unique moments. Its not so much for me but for everybody else not being there, ie grandparents, so the question is - do you care more about you being in the moment, or sharing the moment with your closest ones. Its amazing how better connected they are with whats happening to their grandchildren living not so close to them, compared to a generation ago. Also, how much of these memories our kids will have once adults - 'you know, daddy wanted to be in the moment so sorry not many photos or videos from important moments of your childhood' is pretty lame to me, but thats me. I still see purpose of photography as service to others rather than me, me and me all the way down. Since kids are so active, there are some cool things like very slow mo videos that give completely new perspective - process it in 30s if needed at all and share. Completely unavailable even in current 5000$+ cameras. And yes on big screen you see various errors and less quality, but nobody I know watches it on big screens anymore.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

chongli 2y ago

Honestly, the more photos I take with my phone, the more I find myself craving a film camera. It's not just the look of film which I find more appealing than digital photos, the physicality of the whole thing. Operating a film camera (especially older ones like Leica rangefinders or large format view cameras) is a very hands-on and deliberate process. You don't take a photo with an old camera, you make a photo. This means you need to spend a lot more time composing the shot, focusing on the subject, metering the light (or using the zone system [1] if you want to go really old-school), setting the lens aperture and shutter speed, and finally taking the picture. In the case of a large format camera, you find yourself ducking under a dark cloth and focusing the (upside-down) image on a piece of ground glass, even using a magnifying glass for critical focusing! The deliberate process doesn't stop with exposing the image. It continues into the dark room with creative control over the development and printing processes. From a single negative you can spend hours making test prints and playing with the exposure of the final print, using techniques such as dodging, burning, and masking. You can also do some crazy things with an enlarger; even producing wall-sized prints at home!

barnabee 2y ago

I haven’t cared about megapixels for a long time. My “real” camera is a decade old and has just a 16 megapixel sensor. With the right lens(es) it still destroys every iPhone. I don’t see myself getting rid of it for a phone camera any time soon. If anything, I feel the opposite and want my camera with me (rather than just my phone) more of the time. That said, I also still take loads of photos on my phone and look forward to that camera becoming more capable. And I completely hear and am on board with the argument about enjoying things in the moment and not getting stuck behind a camera, or worse, obsessing over posting to social media. Everything in moderation, I suppose.