The Camera Roll Is Broken

It was right around my daughter's high school home coming. She was trying to pick a photo out of a set she had taken at the event, and looking for the best one to share. Same moment, same framing, and no noticeable differences. She swiped back and forth, pausing on each image, trying to decide which one was the best. Then, she asked me which one was better. My kids claim I'm a "girl dad" but I'm certainly the least qualified person to judge home coming photos.

I looked at them and hesitated. Not because the photos were bad, but because they were all fine. Each photo was a strong candidate, but none stood out enough to be declared the clear winner. We definitely went back and forth longer than we should have. "Just roll with that one 🤷", I said. That moment stuck with me.

I realized I had seen this problem before, just in a different setting. Here's the scenario: You ask a stranger to take a group photo for you. You hand them your phone. They give it back and say, "I took a few."

They are being helpful. Thoughtful, even! But what they don't know is that they are signing you up for some work later that night or the next day when you go to share the photo. Same situation as those home coming photos. Which one is the best?

Taking a decent photo is no longer a skill. You get a head start for free with modern phone cameras. There's easy things you you ask yourself, for example: "is everyone smiling in this one?" The result, though, is volume. Every moment produces multiple versions, each slightly different, each worth keeping, none clearly better.

The camera roll treats them all the same.

What should be a simple act of sharing turns into a small decision problem. It's not dramatic, it's just a chore. Multiply that across years of photos and the friction compounds. Not to mention the space those photos are occupying on your device, in the cloud, or maybe both. Scrolling or swiping is the default solution. Not because it works, but because there's no alternative. The good photos don't disappear. They lose their signal.

Over time, I believe this has changed behavior. Photos are taken constantly, but revisited less often. On my iPad I have a photo widget that grabs some photos and surfaces them as memories. Occasionally I'll receive a notification that highlights a trip, person, or year. Most features or tools try to solve the volume by adding structure. Albums, ratings, filters, prompts. Each solution assumes people want to organize. I don't believe the majority of folks do. I know from my own personal experience, I don't. Even further, I turned off location recording a long time ago as a security precaution (see this great post on EXIF data) back when I still posted to social media.

We're not missing storage or editing power. We're missing judgment.

This issue has been top of mind for me as I've recently felt the pull to get back into building mobile apps. AI has sparked an opportunity to get back in the kitchen with the "XCode-branded Pyrex" so to say. I want to explore what modern AI tools have made possible on smaller surfaces, with a tighter scope.

I don't have full weekends to burn. Whatever I work on has to respect my time and solve a problem for me. The photo problem fits that shape. It's small enough to reason about and tangible enough to test. And most importantly, personal enough to care whether the result feels right.

So I started experimenting. Let's see if software can take on the burden of picking the best photo and... do it well.

Stay tuned!