Comment by Timothee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Timothee | Hacker News Reader

I think he has some good points regarding the lack of curation in photo libraries nowadays.

However, I'd argue that having the filters actually pushes for curation. Since there are more steps to make a picture "interesting" before posting, you're most likely to pick more carefully. In a way, because you're using filters, there's an expectation that the picture should be interesting.

The other thing is that, honestly, using filters has produced pretty nice pictures for me and I'm taking more casual pictures as a result. Maybe I'll regret not having the unaltered version later… but in the meantime, I made some pictures that are more interesting than they would have been without any filters. The banality of some subjects gain from the filters, even if they're canned. For example, instead of just posting "Painting today", I took a picture of my painter tape, applied some filters and posted it with "Painting". I wouldn't care about that picture otherwise, but it looks good and adds a little bit of something. (IMHO)

But, as with all things, this fad will most likely pass.

I'll also add that people tend to like professional pictures better than their own. If I think of my wedding, as pictures, I like the professional ones better, while I like the ones my friends took more for the memories they bring than for the inherent quality of the picture.

The pictures you see in magazines are all touched up and beautified. You barely ever have pictures straight from the camera.

And this is definitely the appeal to all these filters: anyone can make a picture that has some of the qualities of a professional picture, but for banal events and things of your life, when you wouldn't get a professional.

Part of this is hardware, specifically lenses. Camera and phone manufacturers toss around megapixels and other technical specs with impunity but just look at a SLR prime lens. It is much larger, so that for a given shutter speed and ISO, it just simply lets in more light. Which allows for better pictures that have more dynamic range, more detail and less noise.

...and the ability to select a shadow depth of field is probably a bigger factor in achieving the "pro look" than raw sharpness etc.

Curating a large photo library is easy. Just don't worry about it until you actually want to worry about it. I take a few hundred photos every month, rarely delete any of them. Every once in a while I'll group the photos together by the year and month they were taken and stick them in a folder.

At the end of the year my wife and I use Shutterfly to create a nice bound book w/ our favorite pics from the year. We'll occasionally create smaller books for trips or other special occasions.

No stress. No lost photos, no lost history. My parents photos have big gaps... a few pictures here and there to capture an event they thought was photo worthy. My kids will be able to sift through hundreds of photos, looking over details about their child hood, their first house, the old couch, dad when he had hair, the dogs, all of it. I don't see a downside.

Interesting, most photographers I know keep the original RAW file from their cameras and work on copies for processing, storing the source as raw material for future projects. Instagram (and the like) forces your hand in the production of a finished product, no looking back.

I'm no photographer! :) To be fair, I'm using Camera+ which gives me the ability to save the original file too. In general, I just don't because a lot of the pictures are just for punctual use and present little interest to me in their original form.

you can always use photos from your camera roll in instagram, making it a post-process only app. Or you can take photos in instagram and (unfortunately) not have a 'raw' file left.

To the downvoters, I meant that as a good thing.

FYI — You can enable a setting in Instagram to save originals to your photo library.

That's why I like Hipstamatic, it requires setting up that ideal filter for a shot ahead of time, and if the photo doesn't turn out then you've lost your shot. Add in the random shifting of the photo and you get some wonderful found photos with a bunch of low quality attempts.

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