The Philosophy of Photoframes

[Com Func]

I'm starting this thread to make a few points about photoframes in general - whether it's implemented as a purpose built hardware device, or it's implemented by software running on Android/iOS - because I think this is a deeper topic than you first imagine. I'm also interested in other people's views on the matter, and how they use their photoframe. 

Firstly, how many people have massive a photo collection but never open it? How many people take great care over taking, say, holiday photos, then never re-visit them? On one hand, this seems to make the whole exercise pointless, and on the other, that photo collection could represent a wasted resource.  We are all very busy nowadays, so there isn't time to exploit that 'resource', by regularly sitting down and going through the collection.  But there is another way - by multi-tasking. We can catch views of our photo collection on a photoframe, while cooking, eating, cleaning, or just walking past the device. 

Secondly, when dealing with creative activities, it's a journey. All you can do is start, and see where it takes you. It's true of art, music, photography, design, architecture, the lot. This photoframe question is a similar ongoing journey. I will list some of those purposes.

1. Precious Social Memories

This is the classic purpose. Many people put precious photos of family and friends around their home (and sometimes office). Why is that?  That's for other's to say, but I've found interesting side effects from revisiting my old photos. 

• When you see them it reminds you just how (paradoxically) special 'ordinary' life is, and how precious those emotional connections are. 
• I also find I can look at events from 5 or 10 or more years ago, and instantly have a new perspective on them, different from what I had at the time. It's a kind of revelation that comes with age, where the expressions somehow become transparent and reveal a situation somewhat different to how we felt it and understood it at the time.
• In the case of family members that have passed away, the loss may not seem quite so brutal if we can revisit a photographic memory. 

2. Life History

There are many events like holidays, passing an exam, buying a home, etc, which may not be great photos, but they represent memorable parts of our life journey.  I easily forget a lot of these. Seeing those images again, not only re-awakens the memory, but also reminds us to aim for more of those types of events.

3. Architecture and Design

What is good design? What is good architecture?  I often come up against difficult questions in this area that I can't make my mind up about.  You can sit down and ponder it, but it doesn't really help.  But I have found that the more you revisit a photo of a famous building or car or whatever, the more insights you get into it, till eventually you can decide if it's good design or not (for you), and what design lessons you can draw from it. 

4. Art

Some of the standard hardware photoframes come with an initial art library, and an option to purchase more - for example Samsung's 'The Frame TV' (which I have) and LG's Gallery TV.  These photoframes have a special matt finish on the glass to make the paintings look more natural, and I think it really works. This obviously allows us to appreciate and gain insights into famous art work and photography.

5. Nature

If you live in a city, it's a good idea to get out into the wilderness from time to time.  Well, even just seeing photos of nature can help to keep us real in this respect. 

Questions.

(Q1) Do we also gain benefit from adding videos?

 I really don't know. It is very complex, whether it enhances the experience or detracts from it. If the option was there I'd try it, but I've got enough on already with just the photos.

(Q2) Does dross detract from the viewing experience?

So if you leave sub-par photos and images in the photoframe collection, does it spoil the overall experience, or does it not matter? This leads to the following 3rd question.

(Q3) Do we want to show the entirety of our photo collection, or just a selected subset?

It's clear from comments in this forum that many people are using their entire collection of ten's of thousands of photos. But there is an activity called 'curation' which some people do as a full time job, and which I've tried to do with my photoframe collection.

In the beginning, my photo slideshow was just going to have the cream of my photos, plus some family moments,  plus other iconic photos I love from other sources. That's  because the main collection has other photos in there that aren't great, but are needed for historical purposes. So for example,  I want to remember my holiday in Canada in my main collection, but a lot of the photos aren't that great as photos, so I don't want all of them in my Photocloud slideshow.  Well, the generation of this subset is a huge task! I've done less than 10%, tackling a bit on odd days. 

But can we have our cake and eat it?  So what would be great would be if I could just mark a photo as being not for display. Then I could quite quickly mark the photos which should be shown, or vice versa.  Then instead of having a subset collection of my prized photos, I'd just hand a copy of my whole photo collection over to Photocloud, and it would skip the ones with a low ranking. I've added this as a new feature request. 

Closing Remarks 

In summary, I think that photoframes are an important and under-rated part of daily life, and I'm interested to know how others view this space.