We Are All Photographers

There are over seven billion cell phones in the world, most of them smartphones. We spend about 4 ½ hours on our phones every day. We check our phones about 144 times a day on average. In addition, almost every smartphone has a camera. I'd venture to say that most of us use the camera and/or photo feature of our cameras on a daily basis. That's a lot of chaff, but some wheat as well. so, most of us are curators as well. 

The term "selfie" first appeared in an Australian online forum on September 13, 2002, less than 25 years ago. Now, it's a common household term, used all over the world, billions of times a day. The Oxford English Dictionary proclaimed it the "word of the year" in 2013, and shortly thereafter, it was even permitted to be used in the game of Scrabble, an even higher honorific. 

What is the meaning of this, other than the fact that we may all be slightly self-obsessed? My guess is that most selfies are subjected to a level of scrutiny not even accorded to the Mona Lisa, which Leonardo fretted over for decades. Further, if we find a flaw, shadow, wrinkle, booger or other distraction in an image we just took, we can fix it with a click, or delete it and take another, and another, and another, ad naseum. In short, we're all critics, and damned quick about it, as well. 

But I digress. Because of this phenomenon,  photography has changed, and, it follows that photographers have changed as well.  For every tortured Van Gogh-like soul who insists, demands, extolls, or begs the public to see things in a new way, there are a million shooters who keep pumping out the same tired old images. Those shooters who never follow the crowd on principle are controlled as surely as all the camp followers, happy to stand elbow to elbow at photo-sites all over the world with kindred spirits  turning out the same old pablum as the rest of the crowd. 

The truth is, beauty is everywhere. Amazing moments happen millions of times a day, and most, sadly go unrecorded, and unshared. Photography has the power to unleash a sense of wonder, to stir the soul, to record life-changing moments, if we are only willing to stop and see things a little differently.