In general we all love pictures. They connect us to a memory. They are an important part of the story being told. However, have we all become a little obsessed with them?
I have two teenagers, so I think I'm fully qualified to answer this. YES, we've become too obsessed with them!!! We now have cameras in our hands at all times. Apple seems to ignore some enhancements with each new roll-out of their phone, but they never fail to enhance the camera.
In the old days we had to process film, print our pictures and then hand deliver them to our friends. Can you even imagine that? I was a teenage girl once. I kinda remember trying to pose a certain way, but it wasn't really a strong thought I had. Pictures were pretty much reserved for special occasions - school dances, holidays and vacations.
It's a truly different world now. We take pictures of EVERYTHING. We take pictures of our food, our friends, our pets (these are the best pictures, I think), our cars, our houses, our offices, you name it.
I was recently involved in the dreaded Homecoming picture ritual. My husband was in charge of getting pictures of my son's group and I was in a different location taking care of the pictures of my daughter's group. Oh my. We took hundreds upon hundreds of pictures. And really, I think these pictures were the highlight of the evening for the girls - taking them, but also, looking at them, sharing them, posting them... It was crazy.
Let's not even get into how difficult it is to actually sift through all the options. We can take so many pictures so quickly, add filters to them, crop them, adjust them, etc... and storage space for the most part is not an issue. So this creates a maze of pictures from or for every event of every day. You can never really go through them all and when you need to actually find one for some "official" use, it's take forever.
Pictures are important for our business. We're an online marketing company. We use pictures in everything we do for our clients. In their websites, their email campaigns and most definitely in their social posts.
Personally though, I'm a bigger fan of the natural, unplanned picture. I don't think that my kids agree with me on this. The picture has replaced both the spoken and the written word for them and I'm not sure this is a good thing. Facebook started this and Instagram and Snapchat took the picture craze the additional step.
I think it has created an environment of needing to feel or look perfect all of the time. It's also having an extremely negative effect on individual's self-esteem. As a mother, this concerns me greatly.
I don't want pictures to go away. I just want us to become less obsessed with them. Is that asking too much?
