Nary a person would disagree that people these days enjoy taking photos. Lots of photos, in fact. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, and now the ascendant Pinterest have not only facilitated picture-sharing but likely encouraged people to take more pictures since the those sites have bridged the gap between the pictures you take and the people with whom you want to share them.

As we move along in this culture of hyper-sharing, the mechanisms through which we capture and share photos are consolidating into devices that can deftly perform all of these actions, namely smartphones. The technology driving digital photography continues to improve and increasingly shrink while the quality and capability of the built-in cameras in smartphones keeps getting better as a result. More and more, smartphones are becoming a reliable all-purpose camera for taking candid photographs. And by candid photographs, I mean self-portraits as you stand in front of your dirty bathroom mirror.

A new study from the Consumer Electronics Association confirms the trend as it found that a growing amount of consumers are relying on their smartphone as their primary camera.

“Smartphones and tablets will expand the scope of the digital imaging industry,” said Chris Ely, manager of industry relations at CEA. “The rise of new digital imaging applications and features for these devices allows consumers to interact and use images in new ways, creating new opportunities for the industry.”

By no means, though, are people abandoning dSLRs and point-and-shoot cameras. A majority of people continue to regard their point-and-shoot camera as their primary camera and a whopping 93% think that point-and-shoot cameras produce the best image quality.

Still, people like portability and that’s helped accelerate the industry of cameras in smartphones. 74% of people prefer smartphones as the most accessible and, really, that’s a no-brainer – the smartphone camera is undoubtedly the camera people have with them at all times so of course they prefer it most for portability. And with the unchecked proliferation of smartphones in the world, it’s only natural that more people are going to consider their smartphone as the go-to camera for those can’t-miss photos.

Aside from the accessibility, though, there’s also that whole instant sharing opportunity with smartphones. Online social networks and camera-equipped smartphones are the perfect media monster for photography; it’s one hand washing the other, really. CEA’s study found that smartphones and tablets encouraged people to share their photographs, with 48% saying they used their smartphones to upload images to social networking sites.

Ely concurred, “Since consumers always have their smartphones at the tip of their fingers these devices are ideal to capture and share the spontaneity of their lives.”

And by spontaneity, Ely means those great hair days that inspire you to take self-portraits as you stand in front of your dirty bathroom mirror.