Can there be too much photography?

We have all seen it - the banal photos that people place on Facebook. Who wants to see yet another photograph of a plate of food or a blurry photograph of what is presumably some animal or other that the photographer thinks is really great?  Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister recently stated:

“What do you get out of all these pictures? What do you do with it? I mean, what exactly do you do with it? You took the picture, what happens now? 

“I don’t understand this new world, everybody’s taking pictures. When do they have time to live? They’re taking pictures all the time. Only taking pictures, that’s all they do. Pictures, pictures, pictures. 

I’m the only person here without all these electronic devices and I’m a free man. You’re all slaves! You’re slaves to your gadgets! You’re slaves!”

To an extent he's right. I laugh at the modern wedding photographer. Instead of taking maybe 6 rolls of 36 exposure film and producing an album with about 20 prints as the final product, they roll up with their digital SLRs and blaze away, taking photographs of everything they see, ending up with 2,000 or 3,000 snapshots of the wedding. None are composed all that well. None are of the standard of the professional photographer of decades past.

We have photographs daily appearing online which are utterly laughable. Who on earth wants to see a photo of a dead cockroach or a sandwich? Believe me, there are photographs of worse things than dead cockroaches or sandwiches online.

The Israeli PM has a definite point - people are obsessed with taking photographs. Technology has become the new drug - more addictive than crack cocaine. We are literally photographing anything and everything. There was a time when somebody that took a photograph every day or every hour of every day was unusual and we admired their work because it was so unusual. Now though, it's far too common.

It's not a case of saying "stop taking photographs". It's more a case of saying think before you photograph. Is this photograph worth taking and is it worth keeping? What are you going to do with the massive collection of photographs that are clogging up your hard drives, many of which you will never ever look at again?

I love photography. I take a camera everywhere - it's in my cellphone - but I don't take photographs all the time. I have a real camera too. I have taken maybe 10,000 photos with it over the past decade. I reckon on taking about 1,000 photos a year on average. By the time I retire in probably 20 - 30 years time, I will have half a million images to view.

Top ten items to carry in your camera bag

What are your top ten items to carry in a camera bag besides your camera? These can be for a variety of purposes. I'll list mine and give the reasons.

1. A GPS unit - just in case I wander off the beaten track and cannot pick up cellphone reception. Most in-phone GPS facilities only work when there's a cellphone signal.
2. A packet of wet wipes - these can be used for so many things.
3. A small blower to blow dust off digital imaging sensors.
4. A notepad, pencil and pencil sharpener for making notes on where I took photographs
5. Business cards - for me, these are not actual "business" cards as there's no market for photography as a job - rather these are more contact cards so people know my name, phone number, email address, linked-in profile etc.
6. A plastic bag and an elastic band. I can secure the elastic band around the bag and around the end of the lens, sealing the body and all but the front of the lens and lens hood against precipitation.
7. Wooly gloves - when it's cold, these will keep your hands warm in order that you can retain flexibility in your fingers when you take them off to take the pictures.
8. String - string is very useful - you can use it to temporarily secure wayward branches etc out of the way of the perfect picture.
9. A Swiss Army knife. These come in for so many useful things. 
10. A flashlight - in case a lens cap or something is dropped and you have to hunt for it in the dark.

Carry a GPS

Of all the things that a hiking photographer could carry that they should carry is a GPS. This will help any photographer to find their way out of remote areas, safely.

In the news over the past few days was a harrowing tale of a taxi driver by the name of JR Kimbler with his 10 year old son Dakota and 6 year old daughter Jade. They had gone hiking in the Congaree National Park. This is a primordial swamp and not exactly the nicest place to be lost in. There are the usual swamp issues - snakes, mosquitoes, crocodiles and possibly bears and wolves. It wasn't the best time to go hiking as many of the boardwalks had been destroyed by falling trees that fell during an ice storm earlier in the year.

The Congaree Swamp looks pretty much like the photograph below (taken on one of my trips to the swamp). The taxi driver had just a simple cellphone with him and a poor signal. It is not surprising that the signal was poor - the swamp covers 20,000 acres. 

This was taken on a nice day. I believe it was June and that my only problem aside from carrying enough water was to cover myself with enough mosquito repellent. Unlike the folks in the story, I carried a GPS though I found it unnecessary to leave the boardwalk.

Be safe, carry a GPS and don't get lost in the swamp or a national park. Not only does it save you time and embarrassment but it also saves the police and National Park wardens the cost and bother of trying to find you. While the police and National Park wardens are busy rescuing people who get lost without a GPS, how many criminals are getting away uncaught? How much is it driving the taxpayer's bills up? It makes economic sense to carry a GPS unit. I know I don't want to get lost.