The Consequence of Smartphone Photos On One's Photography

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been taking more photos with my iPhone 12. I have taken photos of cats at Wanchai Pier near the Hong Kong Convention Centre, feral pigs around Wong Chuk Hang, Mid Levels, and the Peak, and flocks of white cockatoos dancing outside my kitchen window. I have even photographed a crested goshawk perched on my balcony. And as soon as I’ve captured these serendipitous meetings of urban animal life, I share them right away because who doesn’t want to see photos of cats, feral pigs, and exotic birds.

In addition to the urban animal life, I have also photographed reminders for myself and others. It could be just about anything. I have photographed food products I want to procure, personal identification documentation, statements from financial institutions, invoices from service providers, business cards, and records of various odds and ends I need to replenish from time to time, like batteries for my car keys, lightbulbs for my European designed light fixtures, and the style of jeans I like to wear - basically, all of life’s necessities to remember.

Essentially, I use my iPhone to photograph anything in need of remembering and anything out of the ordinary. It is a handy device that is always within reach inside my trouser pocket. Moreover, I can also take screenshots of anything in need of remembering and anything else out of the ordinary on my apps and online sources, like tracking information for shipments, digital membership cards, and confirmation of reservations, in addition to popular memes, foraged images worth keeping, and listing details and photos of items I might purchase.

Fujifilm Provia 400X (Expired 2010) @ 90mm Focal Range

On top of that, I also receive many photos and screenshots of eye-catching discoveries and useful references from other people’s smart device - including friends, family, acquaintances, and employees. Moreover, I often receive photos from people I don’t know - including delivery people, service providers, and retailers. When all is said and done, I receive so many photos from other people - whether on iMessage, WhatsApp, or WeChat - that my photo library has become a hodgepodge of mismatched photos. In other words, it is a real mess.

Of course, no one is forcing me to choose my Apple Photo App as the methodology to house all my photos. I could very well have archived my work product on Adobe Lightroom. Better still, I could’ve splurged on a third party portfolio application and hope that its developers made the synchronization process hassle free - which often it’s not. But then, what about my private photos? Where do I put that? It’s not as if I want that to be mixed up with my work product and my smartphone photos and screenshots, including those shared by others.

Admittedly, I could probably have a better experience with the Apple Photo App, if I were more meticulous in organizing my photos. But, how does one do that when one is inundated with a constant stream of temporary photos and screenshots taken for amusement or functional reasons. I mean, how long does one usually keep a photo of someone else’s confirmation of completing a task? Or a meeting place to be messaged to another person who is lost. Or something fleeting that is entertaining? A week? Maybe a month? Dare I say longer?

For the Apple Photo App to work for me, I would constantly need to prune my photo library from the stream of temporary photos I take and receive on a given day. Moreover, I would need to keep an eye on all the photos I took or received which cannot be deleted until their usefulness has been served. Then there are those photos I keep indefinitely as a record until a change in circumstances happens. Given the different shelf lives of these photos which cannot be immediately purged from my photo library, what prospect of organization is there?

There will always be a photo of a record, a reminder, a confirmation, or an eye-catching discovery kept in your photo library that will throw a wrench into any prospect of organization. Invariably, there will be dozens upon dozens of them, if not hundreds upon hundreds, given a lack of routine meticulous pruning of these unrelated photos. And before long, your photo library will completely be overrun by their infectious presence. When that happens, what really is the point of organizing your photo library? It becomes a mammoth exercise in futility.

Back in the day, when folks were limited to film photography, organizing one’s photos was simpler. We kept a folder for our negatives and positives, and printed only the frames worth printing. Once we printed the photo, we organized them. Our private photos went into albums. Our work product went into portfolios. And seldom did we ever take photos not intended for posterity, like our present day obsession for memory aids or passing amusement. As such, organizing them was unnecessary. We just stacked them away inside a desk drawer.

Kodak Ektachrome E100 @ 90mm Focal Range

That said, it is not like our present day digital era makes organization undoable. Meticulousness aside, we can organize with different apps for different categories of photos or more categories of photos within an app. But really, who does that? Though I am sure some of you do, most of us don’t. As such, we continue taking photos and then mixing them up with all these smartphone photos that were never intended to be kept for posterity - which is precisely the point. We are mixing photos taken for posterity with photos taken for banal reasons.

In doing so, we become less inclined to regard our photos as intended for posterity. It’s only natural, given the mess we see inside our photo library. As a result, we become less mindful towards the intent of the photos we take. Everything we photograph begins to take on the same look and feel as a photo taken with a smartphone. Before long, our photo library - so neglected, unpruned, and disorganized - is buried by the weeds of memory aids and passing amusement. It’s at this point when one must wonder the point of taking photos anymore?

For a while, I reached this personal impasse, wondering why I should bother taking photos with mindful intent for posterity, given my disorganized photo library. It got to a point that I no longer created new albums for new photo sets because I no longer saw the point of being organized. And besides, most of the photos I took were with my iPhone. No point in organizing that. Eventually, I stopped taking photo sets of family and friends with a camera. What is left on my photo library are iPhone photos - varied and random in all its disorganized glory.

Much of the photos I take with my iPhone is done without any premeditation or planning thereof. I simply take my iPhone out and click the button. I don’t really think about framing or lighting. I just take the photo until I get it right - assuming that it’s absolutely necessary or that the opportunity allows it. Needless to say, the resulting photograph isn’t exceptional. It is not worth organizing, so I just leave it on my iCloud where it is then beamed back to all my other Apple devices. And that is how my iPhone photos exist - as memory taking up space.

Not exactly the most exalted place for any photographer’s work to be. But, why should it deserve better? Most of any photographer’s smartphone photos are taken without intent for posterity, given that there is no intent to house them with structure and organization. You are merely taking photos for the sake of taking photos, which only exists as memory taking up space. And that mindset of “just taking photos” invariably permeates beyond smartphones to camera capture. In the end, those camera photos will also be taking up space in the cloud.

At this point, I know what you are thinking. How could a disorganized photo library cause one to deteriorate as a photographer? Well, think of it this way. It’s like the house of a person who hoards. At some point, the person living in that house just gives up on any prospect of ridding the hopeless clutter and becomes resigned to the disorganization. Your photo library really isn’t that different. At some point of insurmountable chaos, one stops caring about organization anymore. So, we come to accept our photo library as a mess and react accordingly.

I do not offer a solution. All I can do is instruct you to be mindful in photo taking with the intent to capture it for posterity. And afterwards with the stream of banal smartphone photos inundating your photo library, you must find the wherewithal to be meticulous in pruning out all the weeds. Otherwise, you might just stop caring. And therein lies the consequence of smartphone photos on your photography.

Maybe that is why I started this blog? It does give me a reason to organize my work product for the blog. And I suppose it really does not hurt that I shoot in film. If nothing else, the fixed number of film frames and resulting photo opportunities per roll of film forces me not to take photos without mindful intent. Every frame counts. So in that way, I shoot and organize my photos for posterity, which really is the point of photography.

Special thanks to Olga for joining me on this photowalk early last summer.

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Mar 18 The Consequence of Smartphone Photos On One's Photography

Disclaimer

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