Photography
The word photography may be translated from Greek as ‘drawing with light’. Since cameras first appeared in the first half of the 19th century, photography has come a long way and the equipment we have today is really fast and simple to use.
I suppose everyone has a digital camera at present, no matter where it is: it may be built in a tablet or a smartphone or even in a multimedia player. Some people are indifferent to photography and cameras – they simply never use them. Others like to take photos and don’t pay much attention to their quality. The others like professional equipment and are interested in the final result.
Fifteen years ago photography was not so widespread as it is today. We had to buy films, have them developed in special offices and then we got prints themselves. It was not possible to understand at once if this or that slide was worth printing, and sometimes people were surprised at the results when they got ready photos in envelopes. Though, it was even interesting, but rather expensive. The cameras people used were simple in their majority, so high quality photos were really a rare thing. Besides, most photos were taken on special occasions, when families gathered to celebrate holidays etc. Of course, there were professional film cameras, but they cost too much, and very few people could afford them.
The situation changed when the first digital cameras appeared. They were relatively cheap and small, and absolutely any model had a small LCD screen to view pictures right after you shoot them. Shooting short videos was also possible. It was really a breakthrough for those days. People began to buy such devices somewhere in 2004.
But this technology brought up a problem, too. People started taking too many photos, most of them were good for nothing, but they were still kept on hard drives and other data storages. In the days of analog photography people used to keep their best photos in albums. Digital photography originally implied less printing. So quite often it was next to impossible to find good ones in tons of files on the computer. I remember that I had the same problem, too. I still have old folders on my PC and can’t find time to delete permanently what I will never need anymore.
At present I am more careful about this. I have a good professional camera and choose only the best pictures for further editing and saving. Having a good photo printer at hand is a good thing, too. Now I understand that keeping photos in an album is better than to simply have them on your computer. And I am not the only one who thinks this way.
The worst thing about today’s photography is a ‘selfie’. When it first appeared, no one could believe that it might become a serious mental disorder. I know people posting tons of new pictures in social networks and other websites daily.
Summing up, I can say that photography today is a technology that provides great opportunities for us, and we should use it aiming at the quality and not the quantity of pictures.
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