Enrico, a member of the LockerGnome community, asks:
“Does anyone else have habits that have yet to be broken from the older days of technology?“
After dealing with the expense and hassle of traditional film cameras for years, it’s sometimes hard to wrap one’s mind around the relative limitless capabilities offered by today’s digital cameras. Making a mistake with lighting, accidentally shooting off pictures of the inside of a book bag, or clumsily snapping a very close photo of one’s thumb is no longer a bank-breaking, film-wasting nuisance. Just click the button again (and again and again) until the perfect shot is achieved. It should be easy, right? Yet it’s hard to break away from the mental barrier that limits one’s ability to just let go once instilled with the constraints of older technology and the need to be frugal.
And there’s no need for a closet full of shoeboxes to keep hundreds of printed photographs around when hard drives and other forms of digital storage are so cheap and plentiful nowadays. Still, like a cherished grandparent who grew up during the Great Depression and never really knew how to enjoy his much-earned prosperity in later life, it’s hard to shed the feeling that one is somehow being wasteful when exercising an itchy trigger finger on the button of a shiny new digital camera.
So there’s one example.
But some people just find it hard to adapt to change of any kind. As Chris Pirillo points out in this video:
“It’s really difficult, sometimes, to let go of the way things used to be. And never has it been more prevalent to me — the issues of being stuck in the past — than when I see an operating system revision or a major software revision; people freak out.”
So what about you? Do you get freaked out when your favorite technologies evolve beyond your comfort zone, or do you like to evolve and adapt along with them? While it’s true that not all change is good, learning to roll with inevitable changes and understanding that things aren’t always going to be done the way that they’re done now is a healthy mindset. What do you think?
I don’t think the camera analogy is a very good one. Or rather, it ought to be modified.
Yes, digital is extremely cheap when it comes to photography, but the advantage of the “old” way is that it forced a photographer to stop and actually consider his or her shot. Photography is not necessarily enhanced by the ability to “spray and pray,” and while working the shutter button like it was an arcade machine shooter *may* give the shot you want, more often than not it’s going to lead to sloppy, poorly composed, rushed photos.
Having said that, I do think that digital photography has opened the door to more experimentation precisely BECAUSE a botched shot is minimally expensive (I hesitate to say “free” because camera shutters don’t last forever and storage still has a cost).
So perhaps the analogy would work better if framed by the notion that film tended to encourage most people to play it safe with their shots and that holdover prevents people from taking creative chances with digital.
I don’t think the camera analogy is a very good one. Or rather, it ought to be modified.
Yes, digital is extremely cheap when it comes to photography, but the advantage of the “old” way is that it forced a photographer to stop and actually consider his or her shot. Photography is not necessarily enhanced by the ability to “spray and pray,” and while working the shutter button like it was an arcade machine shooter *may* give the shot you want, more often than not it’s going to lead to sloppy, poorly composed, rushed photos.
Having said that, I do think that digital photography has opened the door to more experimentation precisely BECAUSE a botched shot is minimally expensive (I hesitate to say “free” because camera shutters don’t last forever and storage still has a cost).
So perhaps the analogy would work better if framed by the notion that film tended to encourage most people to play it safe with their shots and that holdover prevents people from taking creative chances with digital.