The Digital Photography Junkpile

Ahh yes, Digital Photography, the best invention since... well, since photography. No more long waiting for photos to be developed, no expensive cost to pay, and no more hesitation to make snapshots.

So I also got a digital camera about 3 years ago, and I made quite a few Photos with it. Since it's a 1 Gigabyte Card, and since it's possible to just delete pictures, I made hundreds of Photos. But I also encountered one common issue: Most of my pictures are crap. No, I don't mean stuff like "the picture is not good", I mean stuff like "I have 25 Photos of exactly the same thing".

I have started to upload my public photos to Picasa now, and also I have started adding them to Facebook. Now, Facebook has a limitation of 60 Photos per Album. At first, that sounded like an ancient relic in todays "Everything unlimited for free" Internet, but this limitation actually made me think which images to upload. I see soo many photo albums with hundreds of pictures, of which only 20 or so are really good, while the others are all just useless clutter. So I started to actually LOOK at my photos and decide which ones to upload.

The Web 2.0 is a gigantic pile of junk, which is especially a problem with Videos and Photos, because even in 2008, they can still not be properly indexed. And with sometimes 150 or 200 Photos shot in a single evening, managing them all is a lot of work. (Geo-)Tagging, Staring, Adding Captions and Descriptions... That takes time. But in the end, I think it's worth it, simply because it adds a lot of value to the Album, and it allows search engines to properly index it, which means that you can actually find photos in a big pile.

I just do not know if the Picasa 3 Desktop Application is the optimum solution yet. The timeline is a Full-screen application and not something that allows me to easily filter by date (i.e. show me the pictures made on February 15, 2008). Also, the fact that I can not star/unstar photos with the keyboard is a bit annoying. Well, time to look around for some other Applications, but the ease of Uploading to Picasa and Facebook is obviously a big plus on that app.

Oh, and to all the analogue photographers: You are right when you say that Photography used to be an experience in the past. The careful setup and adjustment of the Camera, Tripod, working with Lightning, making sure that the motive is nice and that the Background is good... That may be mostly lost now (and the fact that Polaroid is bankrupt just underlines that), but previously, it was near impossible or at least impractical to capture some unexpected moments in life. For a wedding, I would still hire a professional photographer, but for a party I prefer my own digital snapshots. Just like that motto "Digital for now, Analog for ever" from some microfilm company.