By Glenn Paul
The fundamentals of photography date back to the earliest cave drawings of 25,000 BCE. After all, photography is just storytelling with images -- an art form that's been evolving as long as humanity.
Now that ancient art form has gone digital. And, as digital photography converges with the Internet and mobile communication, it becomes more than the next logical step on the visual communications timeline. It marks the beginning of a personal media revolution.
"The increasing ubiquity of camera phones is allowing anyone to write history's first draft."
Imagine taking a cross-country trip and being able to send minute-by-minute voice-captioned photos for immediate posting to your Web site. Your friends and family wouldn't need to wait for your return, they'd share in everything you see, and hear about it too, just as it's happening.
But digital photography is not only changing how people take pictures. It's changing how they experience their photographs. New technologies, online services, and mediums are making it easy for people to share their photos with voices, narrations, music, subtitles, comments, animations, and more.
Prints and the family photo album are becoming obsolete, replaced with a shared online multimedia experience. Indeed, digital photography is more than taking pictures without film. It's about bringing moments to life with a multi-dimensional, more vibrant means of sharing important moments with others.
Digital rising
Digital photography didn't take off until the late 1990s, when cameras from Kodak, Apple, Casio, and Sony broke the $1,000 barrier. Unfortunately, those cameras were ahead of their time.
Most of us remember early digital photography as more of a chore than a convenience. Files were large, computers were underpowered, editing tools were primitive, and few printers were capable of producing high-quality prints.
Traditional photo prints from film were easier, better, and cheaper. But the Internet soon changed everything. People now had an easy way of sharing their personal and professional photographs with anyone, anywhere in the world.
That universal ability and desire to share photographs online drove the industry in new directions. U.S. digital camera sales grew 40% in 2004, according to Photo Marketing Association International (PMA). And the organization projects that 20.5 million digital cameras will be sold by the end of 2005, to account for 82% of total camera sales.
Photo sharing Web sites such as dotPhoto (my company), Snapfish, Shutterfly, Ofoto (now Kodak EasyShare Gallery), Flickr, and others cropped up to capitalize on the trend, make the process of digital photography easier, and provide new features and capabilities to photographers of all skills.
These sites now offer services that let people upload, edit, share, store, buy, and even sell their photos online. Their initial popularity was fueled by the wizard-driven slideshows they offered, which allow people to quickly organize, package, and email photo albums.
And now, as digital cameras approach market saturation, and online photo storage and publishing services reach maturity and become tightly integrated with cameras and phones, consumers seem ready to leave prints behind.
The print's last stand?
When I started in the online photo sharing business six years ago, we printed about half the images uploaded to the dotPhoto Web site. That's down to about 21% today, and the number is steadily shrinking.
The growing convenience and quality of digital photography is helping people forget their old affection for physical prints. Even in the instances when digital photography isn't replacing traditional methods, it's making them better.
For example, digitally published photo books (known as "books-on-demand") let anyone upload their digital photos, design a layout, and print a nicely bound, high-quality album with glossy pages and personal captions. These books-on-demand are a great way to move important photographs out of the digital realm and into the physical world.
Homemade greeting cards are also becoming a robust business. Hallmark should be worried. Now that consumers have the cameras, computers, online services, and easy-to-use tools, they're skipping the card shop to create and print customized cards online.
Outside of these niche areas, however, traditional prints have declined by almost 40% since 2000, according to PMA marketing research. Sure, some of this decline is because digital photographers print only their best photos, without having to develop a full roll of film for only a few good pictures.
But more and more casual and professional photographers alike are foregoing traditional prints, and opting instead to upload their work to a Web-based photo service, which has the added benefit of serving as a backup to their PC hard drives.
And instead of buying double-prints to share with family and friends, people are sharing their favorite moments with custom slide shows online, as well as CD's and DVD's. In an overwhelmingly wired world, prints simply don't cut it. [When Denise and I got married in January, we simply mailed a ZIP file containing our wedding picture JPEGS to our parents and sent all our friends a pointer to our pictures on one of the photo sharing sites. -- Ed.]
The personal media revolution
These trends are converging to foster a true personal media revolution. Photography is storytelling, and photo enthusiasts want to document their stories instantly, edit them personally, and share them globally.
The most powerful photo sharing sites and editing software let you do just that, with your own background music for photo slide shows, and your own written or voice-recorded captions.
And, the more tools that become available online, the better your storytelling becomes. This truth doesn't only apply to editing photos that have been taken, but to taking pictures in the first place.
This was clearly demonstrated when passengers with camera phones captured harrowing photos of the smoky, chaotic subway tunnels after the London bombings. These pictures were available around the world within seconds.
Indeed, the increasing ubiquity of camera phones is allowing anyone to write history's first draft. Household penetration of camera phones jumped from 2.5 percent to 11 percent between 2003 and 2004, according to PMA, and this growth is projected to continue for the next few years.
Camera phones are already having a social impact. Moblogs (mobile blogs) are being used as citizen watchdog and crime prevention tools, and as instant travel guides. And mobile dating applications that combine images, text messages, and voice conversations are surely having changing courtship rituals.
Soon, camera phones will completely change the way we take pictures and tell personal stories, too. They'll have better cameras, more intuitive software, faster processors, and better wireless capabilities, for faster transmission of voice, photographs, and data.
And it will seem unthinkable to have a phone without a camera. Even the latest digital cameras will appear limited compared to a device that can snap a high-resolution image, add a voice caption, and send it to an online album with just a few clicks.
This freedom is a giant leap for self-expression and storytelling. Digital technology, and the ever smaller and more connected world, is letting us take pictures, and connect with friends and family, in ways never before possible.
Glenn Paulis Chief Technical Officer and Founder of dotPhoto, Inc.