Archives 2004 - Pictures worth a thousand....dollars, that is

August 28, 2004

Then I wrote:
I have never gotten into the digital camera craze. We bought our camera about two years ago, and while I liked the fact that I could instantly see my pictures and decide to keep or delete them, I hated that I couldn't hold them in my hand, show them to people, or place them in an album.

Now I say:
Digital camera? Obsolete. I have one. I just don't even know where it is or remember how to use the darn thing. Now it all on my phone. But thank god for the digital age! I could care less now about holding printed pictures in my hand. I HAVE TOO MANY PRINTED PICTURES. I'm in the process of putting those puppies into piles to eventually get them scanned into my computer.

Then I wrote:
I love photographs. I take after my father in that respect. Dad always had a camera in his hand. We knew growing up that every moment, no matter how insignificant, would be recorded with a click of his shutter. His line: "That will be in the morning papers." He would wait for them to be developed, and then he would write on the pictures the date, the place, commentary, and names; usually misspelled or the wrong person.

Now I say:
I still love photographs. I still take after the old man, and I love looking back at the pictures where he wrote on them. Mainly, because I can't remember who the hell anyone is anymore! He use to try to get me to write on my photographs telling me, "You'll want to know that someday." Yep. I do.

Then I wrote:
My first camera was an Instamatic. One of those big, heavy cameras that spit the picture out the bottom of the camera. You had to wait for it to develop, but it did so right before your eyes. Magic!
The picture had an area where you could write on it which was much better than on the picture itself as my dad always did.

I eventually graduated to a 35 mm camera, a Canon Snappy that I bought myself. It was, and still is, my favorite camera. I carried it everywhere taking tons of photos, clicking away at anything and everything. I hung the pictures on the walls of my bedroom and stuffed them into albums. All of those pictures came to Florida with me, and brought me great comfort when I got homesick.

Once I got married I covered one whole wall in our house with cork-board just so I could hang up all of my pictures. It was a showpiece in our house and everyone loved to find themselves on the board.

Now I say:
I got rid of that Instamatic camera, and of course, now I wish I still had it because it is "in" again. I had so many little extras for that camera that my dad bought me. I wonder who ended up with it.

Now I look at all of those photos I took with my Snappy camera and wonder, "what the hell am I going to do with all of these".

That wall was cool. I had to take it down when we made that room Darcy's bedroom, but I'd love to do that again because then I would have somewhere to put all these pictures!

Then I wrote:
The births of my children brought more pictures. I carried my camera in my diaper bag at all times. My father's death brought me more pictures and three of his cameras. My mother gave me more photos she didn't have room for, and my brother had no use for any pictures so I took some of his baby photos "just in case". Everything still sits in a box in my closet.

Yesterday, in the process of rearranging furniture, I came across some photo albums from my past; wedding pictures, swim team banquet pictures, work pictures. It hit me. I have way too many pictures. I have have way too many pictures of people who I don't know the names of anymore. I have wedding pictures of people who are now divorced. I have pictures of people that I only know and will mean nothing to anyone else. While each picture may tell a story, those stories are in my head. When I am gone and my daughters pick up the photo of my dad in white overalls, climbing on a ladder into our attic, what will they think? Without the story (he was cleaning out birds' nests in our attic), the pictures mean nothing. Digital photography is suddenly looking better to me.

Now I say:
And those stories won't be in my head much longer the way my memory is fading....

Then I wrote:
My project for this school year is to arrange and organize all my photographs. I thought at the time this meant from 1999 to present, but finding these new pictures in my closet, I realize the project is going to be bigger than I thought. How I wish they were all digital so that I could organize them by year into computer files. I could write captions and stories in the files and store them on DVDs. Imagine just grabbing those in a hurricane emergency instead of 25 photo albums. Sigh. I'm being forced slowly into the digital age.

Now I say:
I did that project and everything went into a big bin. Now I have to reorganize and get those pictures in the computer because I inherited MORE pictures after my mother died. I can't have all of these pictures lying around. My goal this year is to get them scanned and some of them made into books. The question then will become...do I toss the pictures? Sigh. It's never ending. Thank god for the digital age now.