Digital Photography

I've never really been one for the snap shot. I enjoy them, like looking at them, approve of the memories they preserve, but I can never bring myself to take them. I have film I haven't developed from many years back and I consider it no real loss.

However, this past Christmas, I recieved a digital camera. I'd asked for it, so it wasn't a bolt out of the blue. I decided that since I was going abroad, and I'd be taking many, multiple pictures, a digital camera made the best possible sense for enjoying and sharing my photos with friends and relations. And I certainly have been taking more pictures. They present such instant gratification and there is no wasted film since decisions on quality can be made in camera.

But this has made me profligate with photos. With a standard camera I can always decide that I really don't need a picture of the artfully draped and quickly fading Valentine's decorations. So a digital camera is far more like the human eye than that of the traditional camera which takes in images but has no ability to eliminate those images which prove poorly designed, badly shot, or- horrors- boring. In the eyes and mind of a human being bad shots, unappealing locations, everyday detritus are wiped away by the necessity of remembering other visions. A traditional photo developed will exist until its destruction- not necessarily so with a digital camera.

So to say that technology leads us farther and farther from the path of pure memory and orality its patently false in the case of the digital camera. The digital eye takes in an image, judges it, and then immortalizes or discards that image. Just like the natural eye.