July 06, 2010

jack shedd on pictures

I don’t think we capture the right moments. The camera flashes and we pose. We pose. We create moments as artificial as the memory we want of them. We stare into lenses and lie, if only a little, so that the record shows we were there, enjoying or not enjoying ourselves, in precisely the way we’d prefer it.

via www.bigcontrarian.com

I think one of the major technology-enabled trends of the past 10 years has been the massive decrease in elapsed time between when a photo is taken and when it is shared...not to mention the correlative reduction in the marginal cost of sharing an individual photo.

Like Jack, I've never been a fan of the posed photo. But as the posed photo gives way to the stream of captured moments, maybe those images will lie less often.