I recently picked up a Polaroid camera “as is” at an estate sale. Curious to see if it actually worked, I spent $24 on a pack of instant film with 8 exposures. I had a hard time deciding what was worthy of being the subject of these $3 photographs. I turned to my camera roll on my phone for some inspiration only to realize that it was best if my digital photos, stayed digital.

Before the age of digital cameras, there was some actual money involved when deciding to take a photo. There was the cost of the film roll and also cost of developing your film and getting prints at the store (more if you picked Double Prints!). Now there is relatively no cost at all (aside from the cost of your camera + memory card) and you can take (and delete) as many pictures as you want as long as it fits on your memory card. So what kind of pictures did I take in the past that were worthy of being developed? I can’t remember… but I’m sure it’s not these. I have 3,665 photos on my phone camera roll right now and I’d probably only spend money to print 1% of them. I’m ashamed to say that these are the kind of photos I take now.

[Edited: Hello :) I’ve edited my explanation to hopefully make my meaning more clear.]

I think my photos have gone from being worth a thousand words to not even worth the ten cents it costs to print.