Twenty years ago, when my family would go on vacations to places like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National park you could expect to see people with $1000 cameras setting up to take a postcard looking shot. Then after a few days they could take their film to get it developed and see how their pictures turned out. My guess is that there was a little more skill involved getting everything to look like you wanted it without setting the camera to “auto” and taking 10′s or 100′s of pictures. Oh how things have changed today.

It didn’t bother me when 1 out of every 200 or more people seemed to have a studio worthy camera and seemed competent or at least committed from the amount of money that they had spent on the equipment they were carrying. Now you can go to the Minnesota Zoo, the Como Zoo, or walk through any city and see one of these “artists” with little or no talent and a camera that costs significantly more than a point and shoot version that should work well enough for everyone. I am not sure what bothers me the most about these people, whether it’s their amount of disposable income to throw into a hobby that anyone can do well or the fact that EVERYONE is doing it (we can’t possibly have that many tourists in St. Paul!). I wouldn’t even be bothered if everyone was carrying around a point and shoot camera ($50-$100) but they seem to be going the way of video recorders. The next time you are thinking about getting a camera?

I suggest you go out and buy a $150 camera and $200 worth of photo editing software and you will be leaps and bounds ahead of these camera wielding tourists. These expensive cameras do have mildly more features and can allow you a higher quality zoom with lens instead of making a picture bigger, but what does that really matter when you can take a 14 MB picture and edit it at a later date? Heck, I can even take a 8 MB picture from a little device I can also call someone with. Why spend the extra money to look like a poser?

Do local camera tourists bother you? Are you one of them? Does anyone look old photos anymore? Or break out old home videos often enough to justify that box in your closet?