Photography is one of my hobbies. At one time it even used to generate a modest secondary income. But it was never about money, it was always about the joy of picture taking that kept me motivated to carry a camera almost everywhere I went. I can remember taking long drives up the coast or spending the day at the zoo carrying my 35mm SLR ready for any picture taking opportunity. “Burning film” was an understatement.
Since I didn’t have a color darkroom part of the ritual after a day’s shooting was gathering the rolls of 35mm film and driving to the little yellow kiosk that stood in the middle of the strip-mall parking lot. Two or three days later I would return to collect the fruits of my labors… chunky envelopes filled with prints. Candy! The next step was to park the car and sort through the prints to see which ones “came out.” The convenience of the neighborhood FotoMat was unbeatable. The kiosks were everywhere. Turnaround time was measured in days not weeks, and the print quality was acceptable for most standard sized prints. At the time, the only thing that was more convenient was the Polaroid camera that carried its own processing lab in the camera body. These were very cool alternatives to the point-and-shoots but limited in what they could do. They complimented the 35mm camera but were never really a substitute.
A few years later came another innovation… the one-hour automated photo lab. Now you could take you film to the lab, and miracle of miracles, your prints, are delivered in one hour. Gradually, the little yellow kiosks began to disappear… not immediately, but gradually. It seems that photographers wanted more than photo processing and printing services. They wanted the satisfaction of seeing their prints while the memories of the events were still fresh… not in days but minutes. So one technological innovation began to displace, then replace, the photo lab kiosk. Still the underlying film-based technology was essentially unchanged. The real revolution was right around the corner.
Enter the 1990’s and the digital still camera. The expression, “did it come out,” was no longer heard since both the casual snap shooter and the pro had the ability to get instant feedback on their pictures. The chances of a botching a shot were greatly reduced and the percentage of acceptable pictures sky-rocketed. Best of all, the digital photographer now had the choice to print art pieces on inexpensive ink-jet printers with terrific results, to view and edit their shots on their computer’s display or even share them with the whole world by uploading the photo files to a social networking site. This represented a fundamental shift in photography. Then in 2001, when the quality of the digital image surpassed that of film, the last nail was driven into the coffin of film-based photography now reduced to a declining niche.
Fast forward eight years. I haven’t seen a FotoMat in years. My Nikon N90s 35mm SLR is gathering dust in my closet. Film sales continue their steep decline. Polaroid is an empty shell of its former self, a licensed brand name only. Kodak, Fuji, Agfa and Ilford all had to change their core business models in order to survive. Yes, the one-hour photo labs are still around as photo departments in drug stores and Wal-Mart but mainly just to print digital images.
This is an example of the sometimes painful process of creative destruction when innovation, in response to, and fueled by, market demand, sweeps away old industries thereby creating new opportunities and growth.
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