If you have ever had a 15-year-old child before, you know your weekends are spent running errands just to give your child practice behind the wheel of the car. We have to log 60 hours of driving time before our daughter receives her license, so we are letting her play “chauffer” whenever we have the time. She is considerably better at it then she was a couple of months ago, so it’s easier now to look around at the scenery rather than concentrate on her skills.
This weekend we drove by an old Blockbuster store, and I started thinking about the change in the video industry. I remember a time when the big thing was to run up to the video store to get a movie for the weekend. That slowly morphed into Netflix, which gave you more convenience of getting your movies and dropping them off, but still didn’t solve the problem of getting the movie you wanted, when you wanted it. Change that today, and you can stream any video you want, anywhere you want. From mobile devices, Smart technology, and even your Google tv, you can have instant access whenever you want it. Which of course has caused old relics like Blockbuster to file for bankruptcy.
And of course industry change doesn’t end there. Look at landline telephones. More and more people are abandoning their traditional landline phones in favor of cell phone only. You used to pick your phone company based on how much they charged for long distance; now you use cell phones with one payment plan for all of your long distance needs. And if you talk continuously with people from around the world, use VoIP or Skype, and connect via the Internet. You can talk anywhere, anytime for one low price.
Every single industry that has had major change over the last 20 years is due to technological advancements. And photography is right in there with them.
Go back 20 years, and you purchased a camera based on the lenses you chose to use. If you wanted to change your output, you invested in different types of film. Film is where the magic happened, and together with a great lens gave you a dynamic photograph. You had to rely on your expertise to create the perfect image within the camera, because you wouldn’t see the results until the final processing took place. But the magic occurred at inception – at the moment you pressed the trigger and captured the image.
