The Evolution Of Digital Photography
The time is rife to put your pics in the limelight!
The advent of digital photography has forever changed the way our culture represents itself, providing a bottomless bucket of photographs that composes our modern digital identity. Since photographs started to move from a piece of glossy paper to an even glossier computer screen, we transitioned to a love of digital photography at a fiery pace, painting a digital self-portrait of modern society that lies somewhere between an image of an idyllic natural landscape and a belfie – there’s now even a device to help you with the latter.
It’s safe to assume that you all are digi-capable enough to research the entire history of photography on Wikipedia, so I’ll leave off the examination of the first photographic process (daguerreotype in case you were wondering). Instead, let’s dive into what we know: digital photography.
Perhaps humankind’s obsession with visual images is what prompted the invention of the daguerreotype back in the mid-1800s. The images produced by daguerreotypes were the most finely detailed of their time, and yet pale in comparison to the number of megapixels that most of us now possess in our pockets and handbags. Today’s innovative developments have shaped the way in which we are able to visually document our lives, in a completely different way than the daguerreotypes did in the mid-1800s.
The first digital image made from a digital camera was produced in 1975 by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak. However, the digital photography market would not start gathering real speed until the early to mid 2000s. This is when the world began to see some of the first digital cameras that were easily within consumers’ reach, such as the Canon EOS D30. However, cameras such as this were still encumbered by low megapixel counts and cables required for transferring images, with the added disadvantage that they lacked our now-beloved Hefe, Valencia, and Brannan filters (among many others). We needed a new player which could catapult us into the big-time digital photography age.
Enter the smartphone. The introduction of the device that we now keep forever within reach started the snap-happy trend, but the real frenzy came when said device could instantly pop that image onto the internet. In its first nine months of existence, Instagram reported that 100 million digital photographs had been uploaded to its system; currently in 2015, Instagram sees 70 million uploads per day. Facebook, the seasoned veteran of social media, trumps those numbers with 36 billion total image uploads in 2010 and a whopping 350 million per day in 2015. Our thirst to share images has become insatiable, and one which we will likely never quench.
The effects of digital photography reach beyond the social aspect and have become a necessary part of marketing and advertising for modern companies that wish to compete. It will come as no surprise that the most common type of content to be uploaded to a Facebook page is a photograph, but photos are also the most common type of content to be shared by Facebook users. In the spring of 2015, 41% of small businesses had a Facebook page, and in June of 2015 75% of brands promoted their Facebook posts. Going beyond just numbers of posts to measurable results, companies that use Facebook also reported a 35% increase in purchasing by a Facebook user who was a fan of their page than by that of a non-fan.
Today the number of images taken increases every second. But where to store these millions and billions of…selfies? I mean, what would Snoop Dogg do without a place to park his pics? Believe it or not, he is relevant to this topic: Snoop Dogg was Instagram’s most prolific celebrity user as of January 2015.
If an Instagram or Facebook page isn’t enough to meet your photographic needs, today’s market suggests starting with the .pics, .photography, .photo and .photos domain names. These alternatives to .com are more straightforward ways of showcasing your business’s visual marketing, giving clients more direct access and a larger platform to view your company’s images. Here at UK2 we have all these domains on offer, as well as an easy website builder tool to get your images in the eyes of your beholders. Find your perfect domain name through our domain search page.
While the world of digital photography keeps expanding into its unburstable balloon of creative ideas (see selfie drones: the mobile narcissist’s new frontier), the world remains ready to consume more of the optically pleasing offerings. Don’t get left behind in the push for pics – get snapping and get sharing.