Digital photography and the ability to instantly delete an unwanted photo preserves history in the short-term, what is important right now, right this instant in time.
However, I saw an interesting argument for good old-fashioned film the other day. A photographer whose name escapes me photographed President Clinton at some function long ago. He was standing with a whole bunch of photographers, all of whom were using digital cameras, but he was using actual film. A couple months later, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal came out, he remembered seeing her face in the crowd at that function, went through his reject photos of that night, and sure enough, there's Bill hugging Monica. That picture, which every other photographer there likely deleted without a second thought within 20 minutes of taking it, wound up on the cover of Time.
Lesson learned: you never know what might be important about the picture you're throwing away. It just proves that hindsight really is 20:20.
Slashdot Mirror
Digital photography and the ability to instantly delete an unwanted photo preserves history in the short-term, what is important right now, right this instant in time. However, I saw an interesting argument for good old-fashioned film the other day. A photographer whose name escapes me photographed President Clinton at some function long ago. He was standing with a whole bunch of photographers, all of whom were using digital cameras, but he was using actual film. A couple months later, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal came out, he remembered seeing her face in the crowd at that function, went through his reject photos of that night, and sure enough, there's Bill hugging Monica. That picture, which every other photographer there likely deleted without a second thought within 20 minutes of taking it, wound up on the cover of Time. Lesson learned: you never know what might be important about the picture you're throwing away. It just proves that hindsight really is 20:20.
...but I still prefer the old-fashioned method of hunting them down and shooting them with an M-16.