Column by PC Magazine: Our Modern World—Weirder by the Minute DIGITAL CAMERA ARM STRETCH. Okay, let's get to the meat of this essay. Perhaps the weirdest societal change has to do with digital cameras and the practice of framing shots in the preview window by holding the camera out in front of yourself. Even ten years ago, nobody would have predicted that most people would now take pictures this way. Give people a pro digital SLR camera and they will still hold the thing in front of them at arm's length. I find it amusing to go to a tourist area and see all these people using the cameras this way.

This observation points to something not often discussed in connection to new technologies, the change in our expectations of the visual world around us. We could call them visual frames or, as I prefer to think of them, image schemas. Image schemas are idealized images of variable richness but never completely photographic (indeed it could be said that even a photograph is schematic in some sense - for instance color richness, depth, framing, etc.) The original conception in Lakoff would differentiate between schemas and rich images but they are better thought of as the same thing on a scale. In this case, the typical image we have is someone taking a picture holding a camera to their eye. Now that is changing more and more to holding it in front of the face with arm slightly outstretched. Since that is the visual expectations, people who are not professionals will use even an SLR that way even though they are intended for use with a viewfinder.

Right now the image schema is in an interesting flux because all kinds of cameras co-exist. This becomes prominent when a group picture is taken and multiple people pass forward their cameras to someone. There is usually the odd film camera in the mix so the photographer has to adjust his or her behavior. Furthermore, some digital cameras have a viewfinder and some don’t. It would be interesting to study the behavior of people and see how their instincts are changing overtime. This pertains to the question of to what extent can our unconscious behavior be brought to the surface for willful decision-making. Of course, what Dvorak fails to mention is that not so long ago, the stereotypical image was of someone looking down into the finder of the camera not holding it to their eye.