Where are we going?

For many years the emphasis in digital photography revolve around the work flow. It began as a way to simplify the learning of complex software like photoshop and lightroom on a computer, but softened into a more generic shoot, edit and share. At roughly the same time social media became big and what drew a lot of views was those digital photos being shared. These two themes dominated developments in the photocentric internet world for most of the past decade. Then cloud computing raised its head and after a few train wrecks, and then the voracious gobbling up of promising startups by the social media and bigger computing and/or internet groups. The theme for this years is definitely one place to store all your photos. I suspect all the contenders are aiming for that sweat spot at the intersection of all these themes. Yet from my perspective all of these offerings have at least one shortcoming which disappoints, since most are essentially free perhaps complaining is not being reasonable. However my photos are mine and I want to look after them. I want to do a range of tasks and I want to be confident that the images are only shared when and where I want. I think it is time to leave the work flow, cloud and social media constraints and refocus on tasks that need to be done. These are methods and skills, some equipment/ hardware, some software. Using these processes and tools that can be learned and mastered in the manner of any true artisan. Then again I might be in the minority, I cringe to think most folk are happy to push the shutter button, click on autofix or the make zany filter and flood the world with wasted bandwidth.