When you have 10,000 photos it’s hard to care much about any one of them

We “took” photos differently when our cameras had a roll of film that could take 24 shots. And it would be days — later just 24 hours — before we got our prints back. That’s when we learned if we got the light right and everybody was ‘in’ the photograph. We didn’t snap photos back then. We positioned everyone. Said dumb shit to try to get them to smile. We worked at making the photograph. A little bit.

Today we one-hand the phone and fire off a burst of half dozen images and if they’re not very good they’ll scroll into oblivion in a few hours. We have no investment in such images. We have so many they’re like a wheelbarrow full of Reichsmarks in 1949. Or a pair of Imelda Marcos’ shoes.

What is the essence of a photograph?

The image would seem to be the obvious answer but I wonder if sharing isn’t an equally important component. Yes, you can take a photo and enjoy it without ever showing it to someone but that rarely happens. When photos were expensive and rare, we hung them on walls for all to see. As we accumulated more, we sat next to each other with an album in our lap, slowly turning pages. Or on the floor with a shoe box filled with “pictures.” I never cared much for carousels filled with 35mm slides. Trapped in a dark room, clicking through hundreds of photos of Old Faithful.

But now photos are cheap and easy. Like that girl in high school. We take thousands and dump them in the sky or cram them onto our phones drop them into a Facebook stream where they live for a few seconds then die. Marie Kondo asks, “Does this photo spark joy in your heart?” If not, give it away. I’ve done that with a life-time of prints. Feels good, like giving a dog you can’t care for to someone who lives on a farm.

There’s no way to share 10,000 photos.

Fixing Flickr

Flickr, the photo sharing site, launched in February, 2004. I created my account in May, 2005, and have been a user ever since. I have more than 1,800 photos in my account which isn’t a large number. That’s because I don’t upload every photo I take. I’ve never used Flickr as a “warehouse” for storing photos. I put stuff on Flickr that I want to share, although I tend to use my blog for that these days. My photos have been viewed more than a million times (collectively) but I doubt that’s a big number, comparatively speaking.

For most of its existence, Flickr has been owned by Yahoo! who fucked it up in ways too numerous to mention. Earlier this year Flickr was sold to SmugMug, a paid image sharing, image hosting service, and online video platform. The new owners are making changes and a bunch of the 800,000 Flickr users are freaking out. They’ve been getting unlimited storage for free and in a couple of months that ends. The new limit is 1,000 photos or upgrade to a Pro account for $50 a year. (Which I did back in 2005)

The vast majority of Flickr users are not using the service as a “photo sharing” platform. They’re taking advantage of the free terabyte of storage to warehouse and back-up all of their photos. Fun while it lasted but guess what? Internet companies make changes like this all the time. I think this is a logical move will keep Flickr financially healthy. Others think it will kill the service. Time will tell.

What my Pro account give me under this new plan?

  • One of the many dumb things Yahoo! did was make Flickr subscribers get a Yahoo! account and use that to log into their Flicker account. Cluster. Fuck. That ends soon and we can use any email account to log in.
  • Unlimited storage
  • Ad-free browsing. I would HATE having ads on my Flickr pages
  • Better stats to see which of photos are most viewed. Admittedly not a big deal to me.
  • Better support when I need it.
  • Longer (10 min) videos. Up from 3 minutes.

Free is not a business model. And if a dollar a week is too pricey for you… sorry, Charlie. I’m happy to pay for services I like. For those who aren’t, there are free services like Google Photos.

GoPro Camera


As far back as Taxicab Confessions I remember wondering what sort of little cameras they used to get the candid video. Not GoPro cameras. In-car video has become common (Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, Carpool Karaoke, etc) but I’d be surprised if they were using these tiny, inexpensive cameras.

I thought it might be fun to keep one of these in the Land Rover. (Don’t ask me why. If I knew when I hit the buy button it has escaped me now.) I’ve always been impressed by the quality of the videos folks got with these and propping up my iPhone never worked the well for me. The GoPro is well designed for this task.

These are really pretty amazing. I can control the camera with an app on my iPhone or even configure for voice commands. In the next few days I want to try the looping feature which is — I assume — how people get all the insane dash-cam videos.

A few people have pointed out the camera angle is too low. No doubt. The Land Rover will have many more placement options.