A good picture is worth a thousand words. That statement may be a cliche, but it is one that has captured the importance of pictures in our world today to a point that there is no gainsaying there are over a million ways digital cameras and photography changed our lives.
There was a time when for everything that happens, one has to find a way of explaining and describing it. Then came a time when you had to find someone who could draw. And then again came the time of Nicéphore Niépce who introduced the first camera, and the long stories that came afterward including that of the dark room. That fast-forwarded to the age of light and enlightenment when the negatives were positively suspended for the digital camera.
Ways Digital Cameras And Photography Changed Our Lives
1. Creating and Saving Memories
Digital cameras and photography have drastically changed the way people store memories through life in terms of pictures. In time past cameras were hard to access for picture purposes of which only the rich could afford it some time, however, it saw an advancement which was basically pioneered by The Nikon Inc.”
2. We are all photographers
Thanks to digital cameras, we have all become photographers since we can easily take pictures of ourselves and others and have them printed at home if we want to have them out.
3. Moments are captured with ease
Now more than ever, we are able to capture moments that are very important or even not so important with so much ease and comfort as we may want. This is one luxury that our forefathers never had.
4. Tell history differently
One of the ways digital cameras and photography changed our lives is by allowing us to tell history in a different way from the way historians told it. Many things in history are now easily altered because no one was able to capture the moments. Nonetheless, with digital camera and photography, we are able to capture history even before it happens.
5. Saves time
In terms of the everyday user, the amount of time needed to take pictures has reduced as one may not necessarily need to go to a photo studio just to have a picture taken. With the smartphone camera you can take pictures as soon as you want, anywhere you want and do whatever you like with less time spent.
6. Near infinite pictures
With the advancement in photography and camera technology, the number of pictures capable of being taken has no limit provided there is enough space for storing such pictures. Nowadays, with the advent of cloud technology, all you need is adequate data or bandwidth, you can take as many pictures as possible to store on physical devices or in the cloud through cloud technology.
7. Discovering the world without moving
The world is a very large place thus the near impossibility for one to travel around the world to just about every choice location and attraction without probably going bankrupt or having a massive tell on your pocket that is if you happen to be a billionaire.
8. Influencing culture
It is not only videos that are influencing cultures; even pictures do. Through them, we learn the way others dress and do things that we adopt.
9. Giving video option
What is better than still pictures is the video option that digital cameras have come with. Thanks to that, we are now able to not only capture pictures but record things that are happening.
10. Modeling
Today more than ever, we have social media models and influencers. This came by following the marriage between digital photography and social media. People get to snap great pictures and share their thoughts and through this, they are gradually changing modeling from what it used to be.
11. Medical advancement
Just as it is with many other things, digital camera and photography have come to aid the advancement of medicine in many ways. The most important of this is in the aspect of medical photography and clinical trials. Digital cameras of different types are used in pills and other things to get to the parts of the body that cannot be reached normally.
12. Social media campaigns
For those carrying out social media campaigns, there is hardly anything that has changed the world for them as much as digital camera and photography. It has allowed for them to achieve greater engagements with pictures.
13. Improves understanding
Of course, there is no better way that you can explain something to someone than to show it. Thanks to digital photography, you can show almost anything.
14. Getting attention
In the world of business, you can easily get the attention of people through the images you use in your packaging. That is another way that you can bring in photography to change our lives.
15. Reality more real
Before the emergence of digital cameras, you can testify that reality was not necessarily real in the eyes of the camera. This is because it could change the color of things or not even give them colors, just as it could leave out some details. Not anymore.
16. Affordability
Did we talk about how affordable it is for someone to take and have one’s pictures taken? It used to be a luxury that many before us could not afford, now we can decide to take pictures of all the days of our lives because it is extremely cheap to do that.
17. Now the world is a global village
I know that when the world was described as a global village, it was because of the internet. But then with transportation and photography, people can tell the looks of places they have not visited and see people in places they would never get to visit.
18. Advertising
One of the biggest scorers in the advancement of photography and the emergence of the digital camera is the world of advertising. It has allowed for realistic and high-quality pictures to be taken for promotional purposes.
19. Picture manipulation
Yet another of the many ways digital cameras and photography changed our lives is through allowing us to manipulate pictures even before taking them. You can even decide to put emphasis in a certain place as against another or enhance the color.
20. No limitation of time to take pictures
There was a time that you couldn’t take a picture because of the influence of light; it was either too much or too little. Time is no more an issue whether you want to take your pictures in the day or late at night.
21. Pictures are more everlasting
Pictures are more everlasting today than they were years ago. You can duplicate pictures as easily as you want without needing anything like the negative. For those that can remember what that is.
22. Better treatment for our teeth
Digital cameras have made the work of the dentist very easy not only in diagnosing what is happening with our teeth but also in treating them. In fact, there are many ways that digital camera is applied in dental care.
23. Almost everyone is a “Cameraman”
In 2017, it was estimated that over 1.2 trillion pictures would be taken. While digital cameras are having a large chunk of the photo cake, smartphones and tablets are also doing a good work in that regards. This has made almost everyone a cameraman of some sort.
24. Seeing is believing…
Although through some tools like photoshop, the originality of pictures could be brought to question, photography has made it very easy for us to see things and believe them than if we were told about them.
25. Life is easier
Digital cameras now come very small in a way that you can put them in your pocket and walk around without feeling the weight of it. At least, that has made life much easier than in the days when you would have to carry a bag around.
26. Opened doors for more custom cameras
With the advancement of cameras to the point of the digital ones, we now have custom cameras for different things including cameras for sports, water, medicine, and more.
27. Prevent waste
Digital cameras have saved us a lot of waste, before now, you can take many pictures and later realize that all of them are bad because they were not well taken or because of some other things. Now, that has been eliminated completely.
28. Elicit emotional response
Photography has helped us to influence the emotions of others by presenting things in certain ways. Through this, people have been able to drive sales, get help, and do other things.
29. We can now capture the big picture
There was no way that you could take a picture before now and still appear in the picture. But with time and the changes that digital cameras have brought, you can have the timer set and have yourself in any picture. Welcome to the big picture.
30. Photography has become much easier
Professional photographers still go to school to learn the art, but then there are many of us that just pick cameras and with ease take as many pictures as we want. The thing with lighting, angles, and more have become easier than ever before.
31. Security benefits
Digital cameras and photography have given a massive boost to security as it has helped in solving a lot of crimes in the past both accidentally and otherwise.
32. It has changed our experiences
The emergence of the digital camera which has come after many years of evolution in photography has changed our experiences completely. Traveling now becomes more exciting and we do not get to experience things, but capture them as well.
33. Selfie
In the union between digital cameras and smartphones, we get introduced to an era of selfies which is something that was not in our dictionaries a few years ago. People now take pictures of themselves and others with mobile phones thanks to front cameras. What is more is the thing with selfie sticks.
34. Appreciate nature
Have you been made to be more appreciative of life and nature thanks to pictures? That is one of the things that digital camera and photography have done to us all, having seen pictures of places and things of nature we have never seen before.
35. Business opportunities
The opportunities provided by photography and digital cameras are immense. People make money from taking pictures of their normal lives and things they see around and make money either from selling them online or sharing them on sites and blogs and making money from that.
36. Social events are now different
The availability of digital cameras has changed the way social events are held and the memories of them are stored for a very long time.
37. We appear in places we cannot remember going to
Have you ever seen yourself in someone else’s pictures without knowing when it was taken? That is just one of the ways our lives have been changed.
38. Instant feedback
If you take pictures now, you can have instant feedback to see if they are good or not, because of the LCD that digital cameras come with. This has changed the way things used to be done since you had to wait for the picture to be processed first.
39. Everyone is now a journalist
One of the most important and final ways digital cameras and photography changed our lives is through citizen journalism. Anyone can easily see something wrong or something happening and take a picture of it and in no time, it will become news without even getting to the mainstream media thanks to the social media.
40. What if?
What if there was a digital camera when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made it to the moon? What if there was one when Jesus was born?
See Also: Top 12 Cameras for YouTube Videos and Vlogging
For the record, it is not only in good ways that digital cameras and photography have come to change our lives forever, here are some negative ways that they have done that:
41. Easy manipulation
One of the greatest challenges brought by the digital camera and its union with a computer and new technology is that it has made it easy for people to manipulate images for improper use.
42. Blackmail
Since everyone now can take pictures of people when they feel like, people are able to get the pictures of others in unguarded situations and that has led to a lot of blackmails.
43. Security concerns
Through digital photos, people have not only told about their locations but also too much about themselves, which has left many people vulnerable.
44. Dangers of a single story
One of the popular lectures of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie is on the dangers of a single story. There is nothing that tells single stories as much as photography. The lens only captures what the person behind the button wants you to see. As such the boom of digital camera has only armed more people with single stories.
45. It has altered reality
Because it is now easy for everyone to take pictures one wants and work on them as one pleases, it has become easy for people to alter reality or to at least, change some parts of it.
46. Privacy is lost
Because people can take pictures of others and the homes of people and share them on the internet without any permission, the ease with which people take pictures has also affected our lives.
47. Bullying
Another thing that digital cameras and photography has caused or increased is cyberbullying. People’s pictures are taken in unguarded moments and they are made fun of on the internet by others who think something is wrong with the images.
48. Getting carried away
Photography and the urge to take pictures have got people so carried away that we mix priorities and instead of saving people in dire need, people want to snap pictures and share on social media, which has led to the death of many.
49. The dangerous positions people put themselves
In 2011, 3 sisters were killed by a train in an attempt to take selfies. More lives would be lost as a result of people taking to very dangerous spots in order to take pictures including falling from cliffs. There are more that would survive, but not without serious injuries.
50. Photography and negative effects of social media
Among the negative effects of social media is that it leads to depression because people tend to believe the lives of others are better than theirs. That is caused by the ease with which people can take pictures of themselves and manipulate them to show them having the best of lives. Also, the image of others can get others to feel ashamed of themselves and guilty.
