Pocketography: the democratization of photography

Pocketography the democratization of photography When you take high-quality camera phones, combine them with sophisticated social media apps and put them in the pockets of nearly every human on the planet, what you get is a whole new way of documenting history. And cats. Global mobile In 2013, smartphone sales are expected to surpass other cell phone sales for the first time ever. Combined with increased internet usage, this signifies a big boom for social photography. US 322 million India 907 million mobile subscriptions mobile subscriptions China 1 billion mobile subscriptions 6 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide 1 billion (or 16.7%) are smartphones. That's up 46.6% from a year ago. There are 2.3 billion internet users worldwide. That's a 100% increase from 5 years ago. 65% of the growth is in developing nations. "Instant" photo sharing over the years Tintype was the first "instant" photograph, and you had to sit perfectly still for 15 seconds (and wait another 10 minutes to get a print you could show off). With Google Glass, you'll be able to capture and share real-time footage of all the cool things you do on the move, like skydive or trip on the sidewalk. 1 hr 10 min 60 sec Seconds Real time Tintype 10 minutes Polaroid 60 seconds One-hour photo 1 hour Instagram photo sharing Seconds Google Glass Real time Shutter-happy The total number of photos on Facebook, which document our beers, babies and bacon obsessions, is 10,000 times more than the total number of photos in the U.S. Library of Congress, which document U.S. history since the beginning of time. By 2000, 85 billion photos had been taken (ever). Today that number is 3.5 trillion. For perspective, 3.5 trillion stacked pennies would be 3 million miles tall. Those pennies could wrap around the earth 120 times. 3.5 trillion 140 billion total photos on Facebook 85 billion 2013 250 million 2000 40 million daily uploads to Facebook daily uploads to Instagram Mega-megapixels When camera phones had only a megapixel (or less), it was obvious which photos were shot via mobile. Now, with mobile cameras rocking anywhere from 8 to 41 megapixels, it's hard to tell if a photo came from a phone or a pro SLR. 41MP Nokia 808 Pureview 16MP HTC Titan I 12MP Sony Xperia s 8MP iPhone 5 2MP Original iPhone 1MP Nokia 7610 0.1MP J-SHO04 Mobile journalism Time Magazine photographers used mobile photography to shoot Hurricane Sandy so they could share the photos instantly, and they even used one of the mobile shots on the magazine's cover. 1.3 million sec Hurricane Sandy photos were posted to sec Instagram at a speed of 10 photos per second. sec 4 sec sec 2013 2010 1976 1948 1850 s