No family vacation is complete without tons and tons of
pictures, and for many years, no trip was complete without one final side
excursion: a visit to the local drug store to develop those pictures to share
with the family and friends.
But times have changed, as anyone who’s visited a Facebook,
Flickr or Instagram page lately knows. Sharing photos has gone from a
time-consuming process to something instantaneous and yes, even
cross-generational.
For Dave Heffner, manager of Community Financial’s Lending
Department, technology has become a remarkably quick and easy way to share
vacation photos with his kids, parents, and everyone in between.
“The thing that always amazes me
with technology is, you’re standing wherever you are, like the rim of the Grand
Canyon (where he and his family visited in 2012), and you can take a picture
and text it to 10 people right away, ‘Bam!’” he said.
“You can immediately share your experience with your friends
and family.”
The ease of use and instantaneous features of smartphone and
digital cameras sent shockwaves through the traditional film industry. The iconic
Kodak film company filed for bankruptcy over a year ago and discontinued
several once-popular film products due to a massive decrease in usage.
Everyone adapts to the newest technology at a different pace,
but even the older generation is starting to make some progress, at least in
the case of Heffner’s family. Heffner
usually posts vacation photos to a website or sends them to family members via
text, but he has a different process for his parents.
“My parents are in their 70s and they’re not overly tech
savvy, so instead of having them go to a website we’ll burn them a CD of our
vacation pictures and send that to them.
Then they can just pop it in a computer when they go home and say, ‘Wow, look
at those.’”
For the Gen Y and X crowd especially, Facebook is one of the
most popular ways to share photos, with
as many as 964 pictures uploaded to the site every second according to
WikiAnswers estimates. Facebook also bought the growing photo site Instagram
for about $1 billion in cash and stock options last year, another extremely
popular way to share photos.
Smartphone photography has exploded as well, growing from
17% of all photos and videos taken two years ago to 27% according to a December
2011 study by the NPD Group, a number that has likely only grown tremendously
since then. Heffner and his family are among those contributing to digital and
smartphone photography revolution, especially considering the results of their
last family vacation.
“I bet we had 600 or 700 pictures
easy, 400 on my iPhone and 300 on my camera, with a bunch of the kids’ phone
too,” he said.
When asked what he likes most about the technology, Heffner
didn’t hesitate.
“The immediacy, you can share pictures right away, share the
experience right away. It’s pretty phenomenal, I’m 48 years old and 20 years
ago we had a completely different way of doing things.”
Sources include:
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/20/the-photography-blog-rise-of-the-smartphone-but-smart-photography-too/
http://mashable.com/2012/04/09/facebook-instagram-buy/
Photo of Nathan and Delaney Heffner at Zion National Park.
Photo of Nathan and Delaney Heffner at Zion National Park.
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