KILKENNY -- Most of this weekend involved packing boxes for our move from Kilkenny and throughout the sifting and shifting process I thumbed through dozens of Kodak moments that I scanned into Photoshop album. Some of them also went to my Flickr photostream but most went from an unfiled box to a filed digital collection.
I felt a little irony in my process of throwing away around 100 Kodak prints the same week that Kodak laid off 10,000 workers. My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic. My first digital camera was a Kodak DC-240. Now the only film camera in my life is an artefact.
Things have changed during the 26 years of my camera ownership. I have just over six years of digital camera ownership but more than 30 times more digital photos than analogue ones. I print the best of my digital camera images--something made easier by several online print processing companies. It seems that many others are doing the same thing because for the first time in its history Kodak booked the same amount in both its analogue and digital business--$1.83 billion last quarter.
As Chris Gulker notes, "If Kodak manages to transform itself into a digital leader, it may be one of the first instances of an old-line company surviving a major paradigm shift". It's an event worth monitoring because it mirrors how the world is recording Kodak moments.
