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Baby boomer meets millennials at wedding ...

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Jeff

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Wow, what a weekend! Son was married and brought into our family a wonderful new daughter-in-law, we met a great family at events that celebrated this marriage, and we're all looking forward to a new chapter our lives.

And wow, what a culture shock for this baby boomer riding sharing that emotional roller coaster with a bunch of millennials. What we have in common is family and the desire to share what we saw, remember these special moments, and record the beauty we saw in the weekend. I carried along my EM-1 on a shoulder strap (and iPhone in the pocket), while all (not some, all) of the many young friends, nieces and nephews were laughing, loving, and sharing great shots of their lives in real time across multiple social media streams. Putting down the EM-1 and pulling out the iPhone allowed me to join the real-time conversation, and was great fun.

I mean literally 1000's of snaps, short clips, of things that really touch our hearts as parents. Sunday morning we shared with our new in-laws, pouring over the shots, laughing at the fun shots, tearing up seeing how their lives have changed and how they and their friends are beginning their families. They've included us in their lives, and we're sharing ours with them, too.

Why this post? Because I think I'm finally getting it. Photography continues to evolve as an amazing new medium to record the beauty in our lives, remember and share moments, in real time and in archive. The formal wedding photographers looked to be doing a great job; we look forward to seeing the fruits of their work. But for me the revelation was the extent to which informal social shooting versus formal wedding photography is not either/or business It's both/and. Whatever role photography may have had in formative years of this baby boomer -- a role made possible by the innovation of Kodak, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, et al. -- is now just one part of much richer, vibrant, meaningful new roll of images. It's mediated by new companies who are not reaching for the ultimate in image quality, but by the ability to share and communicate.

I love photography and will never stop trying to shoot the perfect photo. But life is too short and too precious to neglect the world of social photography and image creation for new media. So its time for me to gear up and learn how to translate what I've learned to this new age, and to get it done in time for more weddings of our children and the next chapter of our lives.

Not going to scrap the camera gear quite yet, but definitely going to be spending more time learning how to create decent images for social media.

--
Jeff
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jck_photos/sets/
 
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I've been saying "both/and" all along. As a member of Gen X (between the Boomers and the Millennials) this may have been more obvious to me, but the attitude of so many (far from all) of the Older Fogies toward phone cameras has always been mysterious to me. Cameras are good things to have and use. Taking pictures is a good thing to do. Sharing is fun. You don't have to choose. Camera on shoulder, phone in pocket. Looking forward to an ever closer relationship between the two.
 
I've never been to a wedding where the people with whom I wanted to share the wedding weren't already there.
 
Next time you are at event where there are a lot of young people just observe - there are countless 'unspoken conversations' going on over Snapchat, WhatsApp etc - its how young people use their photo sharing.
 
Lee Jay said:
I've never been to a wedding where the people with whom I wanted to share the wedding weren't already there.

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Lee Jay
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Speaking for ourselves, my wife and I both have parents unable to travel, along with many other friends and cousins throughout the country, and for that matter the world. Sharing with them is huge fun, and really keeps the family much closer than every before.

--
Jeff
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jck_photos/sets/
 
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Our 31 year old daughter was married in October. We had an expensive pro photographer the entire day. His photos are great.

We also had a card on the table with information about an app we set up to collect all the photos and video from the event.

We ended up with about 400 more photos and video from guests that was shared real time and the next morning.

The pro posted a couple photos the next day but we didn't get all of them for a few weeks. The ones that were shared over and over were the ones we collected at the wedding.

Some of the pro photos were shared weeks later but by that time everyone had moved on.

The pro photos are in an album and one 11 x 14 is on my wall. Different photos, different purpose.

One other thing, we also had a photo booth that produced some of the most funny and weird photos of the night. That company had all the photos available for download almost instantly and everyone got a photo strip print at the reception. I was able to download all of them the next day, they were tagged and shared and all the guests had lots of fun with them.

Social media is fun and had we not been able to afford a pro our crowd sourced photos would have covered the event quite nicely.

Oh, and I'm 51 so I don't know what category I'm in, maybe tail end off baby boomers, but I'm the one that set up the app, collected and shared all the photos. I have no idea what that means other than I enjoy Facebook and other social media as much as the younger crowd.
 
HRC2016 said:
Taking the OP further, were those who were taking the countless photos really experiencing the event in their quest to document it?
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Research shows that people who take photographs at an event get greater satisfaction from attending than those who don't take photographs.

So the question is, were the people who didn't take photos really experiencing the event?
 
SoCalWill said:
HRC2016 said:
Taking the OP further, were those who were taking the countless photos really experiencing the event in their quest to document it?
Click to expand...
Research shows that people who take photographs at an event get greater satisfaction from attending than those who don't take photographs.

So the question is, were the people who didn't take photos really experiencing the event?
Click to expand...
 
As long as all the parties involved are enjoying themselves then I don't have any complaints about social media, etc.

For myself, as a Gen X'er, I may share a thing or two here and there, but for the most part I find it all a big distracting PITA that I have no need to delve too far into. There's very little people are sharing that can't wait until later, plus I have very little need to have multiple conversations going on at one time.
 
You are somewhat younger than I am so you would probably be a leading edge Gen X by most measurements. Strauss and Howe put the breaking point at birth year 1961 when considering historical patterns, others at 1964 or 1965 based purely on demographics.

Note that individual generational identities can vary even for people born in the same year, based on family and social constellation. A youngest child with a lot of older siblings may end up identifying with the older group, while an oldest child in a social group may end up sharing generational characteristics with the younger people who surrounded him or her in childhood. Obviously this is most true of people who are born near the end of a cycle rather than those who are born in the middle of a generation.

The age/generational identity of your parents can also have an effect on your own generational identity, particularly if you are born on a cusp.
 
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Sonyshine said:
See.... Not everyone gets it! :)
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Some people have Facebook pages that are great and others have pages that suck. Different individuals use technology differently. Some are skilled, some aren't.

It's just like this website. A whole wide spectrum of interests, abilities, and resources. People who are into photography are completely different from one another. Who "gets" what photography is about? It's not an "it," it's a bunch of stuff.

Social networking, like photography, isn't an "it." "It" is everything from garbage to well done.

Some people just don't get music. What does that mean? What does it mean to "get" music? It doesn't mean anything.

And, to repeat myself, I'd like to see some of this social production that's supposedly so great. Let's see the goods. What kind of social net workers are you guys, anyway?

Here's a fun one:

"However, 33 percent of those surveyed said they’ve been asked not to use a mobile device during the wedding, and 65 percent said you should ask the newlyweds for permission before posting wedding photos online. Thirty-one percent said they’ve learned about a wedding they weren’t invited to through social media, and 40 percent agree that it’s rude to post photos of a wedding where people who weren’t invited could see them."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/wedding-social-media_n_3581331.html

Or how about this:

On Wednesday, we took to Twitter to ask our followers what they thought of the custom hashtag trend. They came back with mixed responses, ranging from a resounding “LOVE!” to a definitive “#no.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/wedding-social-media_n_2776477.html

And:

Part 5: Should I Use Social Media at the Wedding?

Tweet?
“No. If I were going to tweet something, it would be a snarky comment about something I noticed or an overheard statement. In which case, I would put it in my drafts and save it to tweet until it can be disassociated from the wedding, so as not to offend the couple.”

Facebook?
“After the fact. Facebook is less about immediacy and more of a place where things live.”

Snapchat?
“Maybe. Sometimes weddings can be extremely cloying or just really irritating for various reasons. If there were going to be a place for you to be a little cutting, it would be Snapchat, where the offending comment would immediately go away. You can send a photo to your best friend who dated the groom before he married this new woman and be like, ‘Don’t worry, the wedding sucks, and here’s a picture of the bride’s hideous dress.’”

Tinder?
“Afterward. If you encounter someone you swiped right on, you could message them: ‘Did I just see you at Dave and Judy’s nups?’ But using Tinder at the wedding proper isn’t going to be as effective as talking to the person, because in the social construct of a wedding, friendliness and openness to love and a kind of letting down of our guards already exists.”

Instagram?
“Yes. Instagram is really the best place for anything wedding-related. But don’t shoot anything negative, like people vomiting. Show people looking pretty.”

http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/12/how-to-have-a-social-media-optimized-wedding.html

"It's" about details, differences, variety. "It's" not about who gets it and who doesn't, "it's" about how it's done.

Get "it"?
Get "it"?
 
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