Photos: Then and Now

Photos play a different role in our life now compared to just about 15 years ago. And they are perceived very differently today than say 50 years ago. But our approach to photo management is still influenced by what photography used to be rather than what it is now.

I remember time when only selected few could be photographed. I have memories from the time that I lived in a village in India (called Ramtek) and then moved to Nagpur in 1957 when I was 8 year old. Until that time, I had never known a device called camera. Even after coming to Nagpur, I don’t remember having the privilege of being captured in a photo until possibly I was about 14 or 15 year old. Today, a 14-minute-old child’s photos are already being shared among family and friends.

Times have changed. Now I use – and I am a bit slower compared to many of my friends in adoption and innovative uses of emerging technology. Many people don’t carry a pen with them now because if then need to remember something – they take photos.

I am sure, per capita photo capture has increased thousand-times from 20 year ago – and it is going to increase by multiple orders of magnitude further in the next few years.

Another major change – photos used to be printed on paper and used to cost a lot to get them, enlarge them, make them presentable in a frame or in an album. Some good traditional people still do those things. But most only have them in electronic form. They can be processed, shared, presented almost effortlessly and for near-zero cost.

Clearly the ‘moment’ has changed in out life. But has the technology to manage those moments kept pace with time. I think, we are still thinking like 3 decades ago when it comes to managing our important visual moments captured as photos. We got to change our perspective and think of all the billions of photos that are being captured by billions of people world-wide using their phones.