Social Networking and Sharing.

The vast development of the internet has encouraged the population to go online thus resulting in the creation of social networking websites such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. The majority of both young children through to adults are computer literate, providing them with almost unlimited access to information and the ability to keep in touch around the globe; whether it be with friends/relatives or the news worldwide. People can now exploit a huge range of digital communication tools, allowing them to share experiences and keep in touch in a way that previous generations could only have imagined. The power of the internet has had a strong impact on photography, both technically and visually.

Flickr

(Although many websites have this layout, I have chosen to focus on Flickr with it being the most popular online photo manager)

Image and video hosting website, Flickr, allows pictured to be stored, sorted and shared online. It helps organize a huge mass of photos into categories which can be searched by any user of the web without even owning a Flickr account. The creation of such websites has democratised professional photographers; there has always been a clear view between professional work and ‘family snaps’ – i.e. space in the gallery. However social networking websites don’t divide any specific quality of photography into categories, allowing amateur photographers to share the space with highly professionals.

Such invention of websites has meant that the creation and documentation of family albums are no long archived but stored online for other people to see. Personally to me, this makes them less intimate and delicate giving them less meaning. 

Instagram

With the ever changing techniques and styles in photography, people have begun using old cameras to get something more genuine out of their image. However the development of technology and social networking has encouraged the creation of new photo manipulation iPhone apps, e.g. Instagram and Hipstamatic. Both of these being photo sharing websites, connected to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr. 

“Digital photography never looked so analogue” after all the development of digital photography, why is it that we now want to convert back to the way old pictures look? Is it because this is the way we want our photographs too look but simply too lazy to go through the development process of film? The excitement of waiting for the process does not exist in this context. The idea of that has been destroyed, this method allows you to capture the image and continue to retake it until you’ve got what you want, the app then allowing you to make it look as though it was captured in an instant.