As digital photography became popular, Kodak, Fuji, and stores that print photographs became scared, because photo buffs no longer needed to have their photos printed.
What to do? How to turn around their fading market?
They decided to turn their fears back onto their customers. Kodak is running ads with the headline, "Mothers don't let your babies grow up to become pixels" urging mommies to print out all digital photographs of their precious darlings.
And last week, London Drugs sent out a glossy 20-page booklet to reinforce the fear:
Print Them So You Can Count On Them
Unfortunately, computer memory is subject to damage and loss. Magnetic memory is more fragile than it seems and you just don't want to leave your valued memories to chance or accidents. To ensure that your treasured photos are always safe and at your fingertips they should be printed, not just stored away in bits and bytes.
You don't know what you got until it's gone.
Scarey stuff, and filled with half-truths. London Drugs (and Kodak) ought to be ashamed of themselves.
The new threat, however, is Facebook. My daughter just got back from her high school band trip to Northern Canada. She was in charge of taking photographs on the trip, and she took over 900 pix in the seven days. She won't be printing any of them. For classmates who want the whole batch, she'll burn a DVD. For everyone else, they can view the photos on Facebook; she spent yesterday evening uploading the best several dozen pictures.
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