I like digital cameras. I especially like mine. It allows me to take photograph after photograph without so much as a whisper of a cost. It runs off rechargeable batteries and requires no further investment past a computer for storage. Ok, so pictures can take up a fair bit of space after time and they do require backing up to prevent loss, but it’s not like I don’t have to do that anyway with my computer. As you might expect from me, the computer itself was not something I had to purchase for the job, I had one already. In fact, most people have one already and for those that don’t they can either buy one at the dirt cheap prices you can get them for nowadays or just use the facilties at the camera shops (that used to do film processing).

I think it would be fair to say that digital has a good number of advantages over its older film rival. Now that’s quite something coming from a camera user who had his first camera at age 4 and a half and was using an SLR at 8 and then by 11 had his own SLR (fully manual or course).

It seems though that this wonderful idea hasn’t just turned my head, it’s turned a lot of other peoples heads. You can’t go anywhere without seeing people snapping away with their minute bundles of silver joy suspended from a neck cord or wrist strap. Walk round London for the best part of 10 minutes and you will have seen more stereotypical Japanese tourists with cameras snapping than you can count on the fingers and toes of a gecko.

It is safe to say it’s here to stay. Surely this must be a good thing….right….?

Photography to me and most who have been doing it for any length of time is a form of art, the challenge is to capture and image no-one else has seen and no-one else will be able to see again. The photographer is hunting for that moment in time at a specific place because it holds some sort of significance (or because their finger slipped). Any decent photographer uses their eyes 99% of the time with their camera by their side ready for the other 1%. I wonder if the average tourist considers their photographs to this extent before they mindlessly snap away at an unsuspecting inanimate object. Now I’m not saying that your average tourist should aspire to be a photographer and think about the shots they take, carefully composing each one in advance, but it would be nice to see them put down their cameras and actually look first.

Now this is the point at which I hark back to the “good old days” because when you had film it cost money. The only time I would ever take two photos of the same thing was when I was 99% sure the photo I had just taken had not worked and it was still worth having. Such times include going over a bridge in Italy whilst on a train and just as I took the photo I was sure I had got one of the upright posts of the bridge in it. Thank god for instinct, as I took another shot and sure enough when I got home there was a picture with a huge great post in the middle of it followed by a stunning picture of a mountain lake. That said, that was just two pictures and I probably didn’t take more than about 100 images for the whole of those two weeks. Now I can and have taken over 100 in a day (record stands at just under 300). Now great as this is I often get the feeling I’m spending all my time desperately trying to capture the moment I’m missing.

A while ago a young photographer from Brighton tried to have a day where people didn’t use their cameras. As far as I understand it was a bit of a damp squib. Seems times change faster than the click of a shutter.