By: Ashley Wiley

Sharing photos is on the rise especially with social media sites like Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Sharing our funny, serious, and inspirational moments has never been easier. Sites like the ones above allow millions of people the chance to find your images, but sometimes an image is more personal. I often have pictures that I want to share with just one person like my best friend or younger sister. A special moment, an inside joke, or a funny face to make them smile. Sending a simple photo message can do the trick, but the iPhone and Android app Snapchat makes sending photos fun.

The app created by four Stafford students, Snapchat has just reached an all-time high with 150 million images processed daily. That’s more than Instagram. What makes Snapchat so popular? You can send quirky pictures to your friends who also have the app. What separates Snapchat from your typical photo message is that the image can only be viewed for a certain amount of time. The sender has the ability to pick how long they want the receiver to be able to view the image. The time can be anywhere from one to ten seconds.

With Snapchat you can capture a moment imperfections and all with your friends. So many posed images of people exist online, and it can make the moment they capture look fake. Snapchats philosophy is take one quick picture of the moment. It may not be the best picture. You could be blinking or there is a glare on your face but the imperfections make the image more special. Plus who cares after ten seconds, or however long you choose, the image will be gone, just a memory for you and your friend. Some might be fast enough to take as screenshot, don’t worry, Snapchat will notify you if this has happened to any of your images.

Snapchat’s rise in popularity will lead to a change in how we share photos. The digital photo has made sharing and storing images easier. I have thousands of images stored my phone and computer, but only a handful of actual photographs. Real photos seem to be more precious to us. We keep them safe in photo albums or with us all time in our wallets. With a digital image we spend less time caring for because we know we can always go back to it. Besides having any technical issues a digital photo will always be there whereas an actual photo can be lost or damaged. I think Snapchat is trying to recapture the preciousness of an image by making it available for such a short time. We have to really capture the moment I our heads before it’s gone. Snapchat makes the photo special again.

Try It!