How Technology is Changing the Way We See the World

The world is shrinking every day. Technology (as in hardware) is making it easier to connect (as in the internet) in a way that humans have never been able to before.  Social networking websites like facebook are letting people use this technology to make human contact through non-human means.

With the explosion in digital photography both in terms of professionals (which happened, arguably, about 10 years ago) and with consumers (a little more than ten years ago), the world is beginning to see itself more frequently and in ways not possible before.

What better example to demonstrate this than the Inauguration of President Obama?  The website Flickr.com (click here for some of my work) is probably one of the most famous photography hosting websites that is also a social networking tool. Since it’s creation in February of 2004, Flickr (now owned by Yahoo), is host to over 3 billion images. For those math whizzes out there, that’s well over a million photo’s uploaded a day.

As of today (1/22/09), when you search “inauguration” on flickr, you receive 130,000 results. The vast majority of these results are entire albums. What does this mean? This means that only 2 days after the Inauguration of President Obama that hundreds of thousands of non-professional photographers have their work accessible by millions of people from any corner of the world.

Furthermore, technology is also allowing us to actually see things better and differently. A very forward-thinking photographer named Chuck Kennedy with the McClatchy-Tribune Photo Service, mounted a remote camera (a Canon 5D with a 16-35mm lens) to the podium that the President Elect spoke at. He was able to capture the closest ever image of the President and his family as he took the Oath of Office and posted in shortly on the internet for the world to see. The speed at which this was accomplished (and arguably the ease with which it was done) was not really available in previous years.

Flickr is currently working with Getty Images, a world-leading photography stock photo agency, to incorporate flickr’s images with Getty’s. In late 2006, CNN launched a program called “ireport” where user submitted content, such as photographs, would be incorporated into their reporting. What does all of this mean? Not only is the gap of human contact shrinking but so too is the gap between the professional and Bob down the street who owns his own camera gear.

The internet and the technologies that have been implemented to it, such as Flickr, have allowed us to view things faster and more diversely than ever before. We are no longer bound to the New York Times for our coverage of an event. This is truly amazing when you sit and think about it.

A couple of years ago some really intelligent people created some technology that is beyond words. It takes images from flickr and combines them into an interactive collage of sorts. Microsoft bought the technology and it was was utilized for the inauguration of Obama. CNN has utilized this to capture “The Moment”–or the inauguration, with this amazing tool  Words cannot describe so i urge you to check it out.

So what do we make of this? The world has changed. The world has shrunk. Photographers are becoming ever-important and ever-utilized. So, pick up your camera, capture the world, and then show the world.

For more information on Chuck Kennedy’s photograph, click here

To see “The Moment” click here

Tags: cnn, Inauguration, ireport, Obama, photography, Photojournalism, President, President obama, professional

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under News, Photography News, Photography Tips, Photojournalism, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.