Photography as a hobby used to be an occasional thing, and it wasn't something that everyone took part in.
Owning a camera was common in many parts of the world but nowhere near as common as it has become now that digital cameras have taken over.
Digital photography has changed more about the way we take pictures than simply increasing the frequency.
It's changed the picture taking landscape completely.
Shot for shot, the price is the same: With film, photography was expensive.
Even with the cheapest of cameras people still had to buy film and then pay to develop that film.
During the last decades of film photography's rule, factoring in the average price of a roll and the average price of developing, it's safe to say that every picture shot cost a consumer between fifty cents and a dollar.
Digital photography doesn't have that issue associated with it at all.
Once a consumer owns all the needed components, their photography expenses are done with.
Having a camera, a battery and a memory card means someone can take as many pictures as they want until the card is full, then they download them and start again.
To print or not to print, that is the question: Of course there is still an ongoing cost of digital photography if you happen to be the type of person who likes prints.
For the first few years of digital photography people tended to print more often, which is generally thought to be the result of simply not understanding the technology that surrounded digital cameras.
It also has to do with the push from photo shops, loudly encouraging their customers to keep coming in.
The more popular digital cameras have become though, the less people seem to be printing.
This also nicely coincides with the wider acceptance of online social networking in which people easily share all of their shots without needing a physical album.
The exact statistics can only be speculated about, but while more digital images are being turned into prints every year, the ration of prints to shots taken is steadily decreasing.
When you don't have a camera...
who doesn't have a camera: Once upon a time people would see things happening that were cool and wished there was a camera handy.
But who carried a camera with them every time they left the house? Only professionals, tourists and the strangely obsessed.
Digital photography took off and changed that for two very big, yet small, reasons.
These days it's hard to be in a place without at least a couple of cameras being around.
Usually a group of people will all have a camera no matter where they are, and in many cases they'll have two.
The initial reason this began to be the case is due the size of digital cameras.
They have become so small that people can take them anywhere without feeling as though they have extra baggage.
The biggest reason for this though is that digital photography now exists within almost every cell phone on the market, and people are rarely without their phones.