Losing Our Camera Stores

We have lost our camera stores.

They used to be a ubiquitous part of every shopping mall. They are gone. So what is there instead. There was Circuit City.. gone. I guess that you might say that Best Buy is a camera store. But often the smart assed clerk that thinks that they know more about computers than God is also cruising and "supporting" people the camera section. Don't ask them at what level the point and shoots map... not a clue... but that is probably true of most folks near a camera. Photography has turned digital and because of this, instantaneous an ubiquitous. Its everywhere. Camera phones on cells take great photos. They are even adjustable through apps or stand alone programs. When the photo is taken there is no little economic investment in the produce. Therefore it doesn't have to right each time. Not being right each time means less dependence on photographic advice. And a decrease in photographic sales of film, flashbulbs and paper, projectors and screens. No one has to advise you on how to use your cell phone camera. Billion dollar businesses have sprung up to modify the photos that are taken to make them look like they were done with toy cameras or ancient Instamatic cameras. People are sharing these "shots" in free or low cost web albums in facebook, flickr, and instagram.

Last week I have had some fun using Apple's Aperture Program to make slide shows of the Merced County Fair's demolition derby. If I were to use the old technology, I would be taking the photos with a camera that would produce"slides" that were cut and glued into cardboard frames. A big company would have processed these photos from a tiny metal canister that hopefully I correctly wound loose film from its light tight storage loop back through the pressure plates and back into the canister. I would have bought my camera at a camera store. The processing at a camera store if I expected careful processing. I would have paid extra to have Kodak do the process and it would have taken two weeks to get back the little box that could have been under exposed. In years the color would fade from these slides and they were subject to coffee spills and dirt and abrasion. I would have bought a slide projector to sequence and project the slides on a screen that I bought from a camera store. My friends would gather around on some given night and allow me to show them my latest photographic quest.

Today, all of this is done without the help of Photographic experts. I shot the photos with a camera I bought at Costco without any advice from anyone. I went on line to pick up the fine details of the new camera and how to modify and save the photos I had taken to hard drive connected to my computer. The photos are in formats that the computer and a computer program understands. I can and have changed the color balance, cropped, framed and set to music that was previously stored on my computer. I can share the results in social media and my friends may choose the look at them or not. I can get comments and support from all of my friends that wish to see a few photos. The photos show up on their computer screens or their television screens. I may use the photos to make my own photo book that people that come to my house can look at while I am making dinner.  Or we can sit down together and I can narrate just like we used to do from behind the projector with a wired remote in hand and darkened room. Clearly no camera shop is need to produce these marvels of modern technology.

Still my mom longs for the stack of photos to sift through and sort. She feels that many good photos will never get printed or shared. And that is a loss. 

Her new camera is digital and since she bought it at Costco a hundred free prints were included. She has her stack of photos that was printed from her new camera, but dad likes to goad her as they are not sorted or edited in any way. Its not that far away from the photographer that projected hundreds of his images in a darkened room to a  crowd totally bored to sleep.

At least now the room is not darkened.   :  )  Pat