Social photography

Photography has become a very social pastime with the uprise of digital cameras, the Internet, and photo-sharing websites. Photographers from all around the world are sharing their work, viewing the work of others, and making connections with people they would have otherwise never met. It’s an amazing thing how social networking and photography have almost merged into one big culture:


                        Social photography is a subcategory of photography focusing upon the technology, interaction and activities of individuals who take photographs. Digital cameras, photo sharing websites and the Internet have enabled new tools and methods of social networking while consumer trends such as flashpacking and adventure travel have led to a worldwide increase in socially connected photographers.
The proliferation of easy-to-use open source blogging methods, inexpensively-priced equipment and content management system applications has led to an increase in photography for social change and amateur photojournalism.
Some extensions of social photography include geotagging and online mapping, while online social networking destinations like Facebook have led to an increase in the popularity of technology employing the real-time transfer of images. Where Facebook allows for users to instantly upload a picture from their mobile phone to their profile, there have recently been a number of services sprouting up that allows users to create real time photo streams. Clixtr is one such service allowing their users to create geo-tagged events, then upload photos through their mobile phone and write comments within that event, thus creating a photo stream.
Where Clixtr allows users to upload photos to an event stream through their mobile phone, a wireless digital camera enables photographers to connect to cellular networks or other hotspots to share photos, print wirelessly and save photos directly to an image hosting website. Geographic areas serviced by outdoor WiFi networks permit extended applications for geocaching which can include the use of Global Positioning Systems and smartphones.
Some news networks and online broadcasters encourage viewers to send in photographs of live, breaking and current events, enabling citizen journalists and amateur photographers to participate in the news gathering process.
In 2010, the American Whitetail Authority was featured in the New York Times in a feature promoting the growing popularity of the use of advanced imaging technology to replace real-kill hunting.