Remember Brownies, or the good old days of traditional 38mm photography where you had to think before you clicked? You better have a good memory, because that era of taking your time and being selective about what you snapped, due to the cost of printing, is a fast disappearing memory.

Now it is digital clickety click anything that moves. Thanks to the likes of iPhoto, Flickr, DoodlePad et al, your family and friends WILL sit through 3000 poorly constructed shots of your granny's tea party just seconds after the last guest leaves. Progress is great, innit!

I would go as far as to say that there is something wrong with you if you don't own a digital camera these days. You have probably either dropped out of society altogether, or you are in the process of making the break from the mainstream and have already thrown out your cell phone, PC and refrigerator. Oh yeah, and you don't wear shoes any more. Either that or you were beaten so badly over the head by an old Brownie camera as a child that you vowed never to get involved with fuzzy megapixels ever again.

Whatever your story, digital camera-less saddoes are in the minority and the rest of us are on the look out for slick ways to sort through the quagmire of unbelievably bad pixelated photos clogging up our camera's flash drives hard drives and online storage spaces.

iPhoto 08

5 years ago, Apple released iPhoto which was a good idea badly executed. As usual the faithful raved about the plug 'n play magic of linking any camera (except the one I had) and seeing their pictures auto-sucked into a slick brushed metal photo manager. It was just a poor relation of iTunes.

The moaners moaned at not being able to find their photos outside of iPhoto, the pros moaned because they couldn't do Photoshop craziness without having to use Photoshop, hmmmm... but now, for their troubles, the Mac community has a rather spiffing iPhoto 08 that should satisfy the sorting, internet and printing needs of any normal camera-head, and then some.

Coming from a background where I took 36 photos a year, and I could tell you about every picture in and out of focus, I found it quite scary to hear the demo guy laying bare the psychology of digital photography. "You take photos based on events. On average you take 50 photos per event. If you have 5000 photos you can now access and easily search them via 100 thumbnails representing each event." I was waiting for the line about, "It is 4.09, time to take your medication, Ed." but not even Apple can research human behavior that precisely.

Flickr

Flickr took the photo game on-line and set standards that I don't believe anyone else has yet bettered. From their warm and friendly welcome, to the gazillion ways to resize, store and share out-of-focus photos, it seems to be everything to all men women and crap photographers world-wide, The Pisstakers included.



Mrs Ed hated it at first because you have to think a little bit before you jump in, but even she now talks in terms of I am going to put this picture on Flickr and link to it from my fave forum. Praise indeed.

Doodlepad

This is neat on-line software from India. You can upload as many photos as you dare, for free, and you can even download them again! (That is quite an important feature, believe it or not, because some freebie photo hosts only let you download degraded versions of the original!) The software then takes photos beyond the album and CD stage and moves more into CafePress territory.

Just like iPhoto and the rest, you can make slideshows and whatever else rocks your boat. But then you can go into Doodlepad and get creative with tees, mugs and all that good merchandising stuff. So now, as well as filling the world with hazy shots of a dog's back leg, you can bless your family with clothing they will never wear and drinking vessels that only get used when 43 other used cups are in the dishwasher and you ran out of soap.

In the right hands, of course Doodlepad is cool. Any right hands in India, that is.

Conconclusion

The photo software and hardware available to us all is obviously wonderful compared to even 5 years ago, but, am I the only one who has issues with a photographic rush to mediocrity? Maybe I am just damaged from having seen my ugly mug in and out of focus 43 times on a Kodak gallery. Maybe everyone else's family is blessed with natural photographers without itchy fingers? Maybe it is good for the tech economy and instead of Shopping for America, the new motto should be more precise - Snap for America. What do you think?