Are We Taking Too Many Photos?

We are now almost obsessed with taking photos regularly. Through the years photography has become cheaper, easier and more acessible. Expensive film cameras which you had to develop yourself gave way to polaroids and cheap film cameras that you could get developed at a local shop. Digital photography then opened up a new dimension which meant you no longer need film and developing. Although expensive at the start, the prices of these cameras soon came down significantly and small, compact digital cameras could then be picked up cheaply. Then mobile phone cameras became the norm and their quality increased along with the ubiquitous use of mobile phones. Today, the majority of people in 1st world countries have a mobile with a good camera on board. And with each stage of this development, accessibility to photography has gotten easier and the number of photos people take has absolutely skyrocketed.

So when we are all taking photographs so much, it perhaps isn’t so silly to ask the question ‘Why are we taking photos, and are we taking too many?’ It is certainly a question I have asked myself many times and after careful thought about it, I have seen myself drastically reduce the number of photos I take.

So now what I want to do now is have a look at some broad reasons why we take photos and think about whether we really need to be taking so many photos for these reasons.

To Convey or Record Information

Photography can have a very practical purpose and that is to convey or record information. Examples of this can be to keep photographic archives of items e.g. in a museum or showing images of outer space. This can be a huge benefit to learning as visual imagery can be a great tool to communicate information.

Over the years we have seen a rise in photographic material for this purpose and this can only be a good thing as it aids learning. So for practical and benficial purposes like this it can only be a good thing to keep taking more photos.

In addition to this, photography can also be used for more commercial purposes such as advertising. I don’t want to get into the pros and cons of marketing and suchike but suffice to say if it is seen as commercially beneficial to use photography for this prupose, it will continue to grow.

Capture Memories

Another reason we take photos is to capture memories. This is a more personal reason we take photographs compared to what I discussed above. We like to take photos of our family and of our life events and suchlike so we can look back on them and reminisce. Now this seems a straightforward reason for taking photos but is perhaps not as straightforward as we think.

Although I appreciate that these type of photos can helpful to jog your memory of people and events years into the future, or to show others, I believe we are taking far too many photos of this kind and it is actually quite detrimental for a number of reasons.

Our brains filter memories and remember them slightly differently to the actual reality of what happened and we often remember things in a more favourable light than the reality of what actually occurred. By keeping huge photographic records of our past we have detailed images of all these events and often when we look back at the photos they don’t meet the expectations of our memories and this can be disappointing. In addition, our brain also can tend to forget uninteresting or unpleasant things that occurred in the past. Again, myriads of photos can bring back these memories in unwelcome ways.

I would also argue that we not only take photos of too many different life events, but when we do choose to photograph these life events, we take far too many photos of these events. e.g. if we went to a party, we nowadays won’t just take one photo of ourselves and our friends at the party, but hundreds of photos of every little thing at the party. Trawling through such a flood of photos can not only be uninteresting but again, leaves nothing to the natural processes of the brain to filter memories, and this often devalues these memories.

So maybe it’s time to capture less photos of these ‘memories’. Sticking to a small number of photos of only the most significant events will allow your brain to remember things differently and perhaps in a better light.

And these photos are not just for our purpose, we nowadays want to share them with everyone. Throwing swathes of these photos up on social media for everyone to see. Trust me, people aren’t that interested. Less really is more, so maybe keep these photos to a minimum.

For Artistic Purposes

Another reason we take photo is to create pieces of art; beautiful images for ourselves and others to see. And there is an obvious value to doing this as beautiful images can make us feel good and enrich our lives. But are we capturing too much beauty? Again, I would argue yes. Of course, what is a beautiful scene is highly personal and subjective, so of course take a photo of something that is beautiful but what we tend to do is keep too many photos of the same thing. For example, you see a nice sunset and you want to capture it, so you go and take a load of photos of the sunset. That’s good as you want to get a good capture of the scene.

However, instead of keeping, or even worse sharing, all these photos you have taken, go through them and pick out the one best photo of that particular scene and get rid of all the rest. Not only does it stop you getting flooded with a lot of mostly duplicate photos but it is also a good exercise to learn to pick out what you think is the best image from a group of similar photos. It can be tricky to do this but as your photographic and artistic skills develop it does get easier.

Whatever you do, don’t upload a load of photos of exactly the same scene. Not only will it bore the viewer and devalue the photos, but it shouldn’t be up to the viewer to pick out the best one. You are the photographer and that’s your job to pick out the best photo. Not doing so does makes you look slightly amatuerish.

This is also applicable when taking photos for any other purpose too. Take as many photos as you need to ensure you get the capture you are looking for but just keep the best one and bin the rest.

Self Promotion

Another type of photography that has become increasingly prevailant is that for self-promotion. i.e. selfies. Whether that be photos of the person in cool locations, doing cool things, hanging out with cool people, or just the standard manipulated, unrealistic version of their face, this type of photo is now common. I can almost understand this style of photography if you are trying to show an image of yourself to help promote a hobby or business but the majority of it is just endless selfies so you look good on your social media to your friends. I have discussed this type of photography previously and will again, at length, in a future post, but suffice to say I believe it’s mostly counter-productive. So, my advice is to keep the number of selfies to a minimum and try to actually make them look as you look in reality.

Brakes on with the Photography?

My answer to this is ‘yes’. Like I have discussed above there are a number of reasons we want to take photos and a lot of these have practical purposes. But I think people need to be more selective of what they shoot and what they upload. Here is a nice little bulleted list of my thoughts on this:

• Only shoot stuff that is significant e.g. for archival purposes, of a memorable event, of a beautiful scene etc.
• You don’t have to take photos of everything and doing so just devalues the photos and your memories.
• When shooting take as many photos as needed to capture the scene. After that, pick only the relevant / best photo(s) and bin the rest.
• Don’t upload vast amount of photos of the same thing. It makes you look amateurish as a photographer and will make the viewer lose interest.

Have we Passed the Peak?

The last thing I want to talk about is the idea that perhaps we are actually starting to photograph less. A lot of people I know are not photographing or uploading nearly as much as they used to but is the an overall trend. I am middle aged and most of the people I know are of a similar age. They grew up with film cameras, they went into a photographic frenzy with the advent or digital and mobile cameras, and are now not taking nearly as many photos. I think they are probably seeing the same things which I have discussed above and now only taking photos of real value. But is this a trend across the whole of the populous. Well, I found this article which seems to catgorically show it is not:

https://photutorial.com/photos-statistics

The number of photos taken is rising each year and in 2023 it was about 1.8 trillion. Yup, that right…it’s not a misprint….1,800,000,000,000 photos. The average US citizen takes 20 photos a day. That alone should be enough to say we are taking too many photos. And this is just the number taken from the data in this article. I would imagine the actual number is a lot higher as this data does not include all sources.

So, no, we haven’t passed the peak and, ‘yes’ we are taking too many photos in my opinion. So maybe it is time for people to think a bit harder about the photos they are taking, be more selective, and just take photos of real value.

Thanks for Reading, Neil