I was a latecomer to both digital photography and the DVD revolution, mainly because I liked things the way they were, and also because I was holding out for the two things to get better before I invested my hard-earned money in them. When I had a film camera, I didn't carry it around like I do my digital camera nowadays, (I always have my camera on me, if you don't believe me, if you spot me in town, ask me and I'll prove it). My camera used to leave the house with me on special occasions, until the price of developing came down, then my daughter and I used to go through a film a week. The opening up of the market made things cheaper in that respect, where as before we had to save up and take our films to Boots or Jessops and wait several years to get your photographs back. The likes of Snappy Snaps made it more accessible, and for a mere 99p, you could get your film developed. They had different grades of pricing, you could get your pictures within the hour if you were willing to splash out, or if you wanted the cheaper option you could go back seven days later. This of course showed that the process of developing photographs perhaps wasn't as difficult as the expensive shops would have had us believe, so then they brought their prices down to compete. I didn't agree with that as a strategy, it's the equivalent of John Lewis trying to compete with the pound shops.
My reason for holding back on a digital camera is simply because the early technology was appalling. I once saw a photograph that had been printed on a computer using a digital camera, and it made everyone look like they were made of Lego. Mobile phone cameras were even worse, can you believe that my first phone with a video camera only had four minutes of recording space and would only hold about twenty pictures? It was 2007 before I went digital, even though I kept my 'proper' camera for special occasions. I couldn't have managed to take a camera out as a matter of routine, (keys, wallet, phone, camera) when I had to use film, even setting it up would have taken too long for the really candid shots. Also, I wouldn't have been able to afford to develop the amount of photographs that I take these days, especially as I delete a lot of them. I think everybody has changed their photography habits in this way, nobody would have gone to Snappy Snaps with a film containing 36 pictures of their lunch, like the Instgram types do.
The sad thing about digital photography is that we don't look at the photos in the same way. Looking through a photo album used to always be an inevitable part of a visit to family members, we don't gather the family round a computer to view the family album in the same way. We also don't have the same anticipation with our photos anymore, as we can see them straight away and delete them if they're no good.
Jessops could have moved with the times to an extent, the problem was that didn't realise that they needed to shed some staff when digital took over. I'm sure the darkroom technicians were rushed off their feet at one point, but they didn't need them in the modern age.
Photo-bombing was also a lot easier in the days when the phrase 'photo-bombing' wasn't invented; standing on the end of a hen night line up with your bollocks peeking out through your fly for example, they wouldn't know about that for a week or so but now they can spot it straight away. (I never did that, I know someone who did).
===
