Pictures

Top:  Zuzu

Middle: Alison

Bottom: Their Daddy when he was about 16 months old

Last week I was redoing a photo album from 1977-78.  The album was falling apart and I was taking all the pictures out of it and putting them into a better album that wouldn't fall apart and would hopefully preserve the pictures.  At the time we took the pictures we thought we were taking lots of them.  We used up rolls of film like toilet paper.  We were always sending them off to get developed and waiting the week or so that it took to get them back.  When we got them back they went into the albums pretty quickly.  I didn't like photos sitting around in envelopes and boxes.  I wanted to look at them, in order, in a book.

How things have changed!  The difference in the quality of the pictures above is striking.  The two top pictures were, of course, taken recently with a digital camera, the bottom one with a film camera in 1978.  Even if the top two pictures had turned out dark like the bottom one, they could have been "fixed" immediately, without paying anything, without any directions to the photo lab, without waiting.  If we took a "bad" picture we kept it anyway because you only got 24 chances in a roll.  Nowadays  you can throw away anything that you don't like and still have plenty of pictures left to choose from.  

Oh, I wish I'd had a digital camera when my kids were young.  As I said we thought we were taking LOTS of pictures, but it was nothing compared to the documentation of my grandchildren, whose faces can be seen in literally thousands of pictures.  See www.flickr.com/photos/plasticporkbone if you want to get an idea of how many photos are there.  And those are only the ones that made the cut.  There were many more on the camera, because we can now take as many pictures as we want in pursuit of the perfect one.

I do love the digital age, especially when it comes to photographs, but there is a downside.  There isn't the need for photo albums anymore and so most people put the pictures they want to save on their computers and when they want to look at them, they go to their monitors and watch them go by.  Or they get a digital picture frame or they use their pictures as screen savers.  That doesn't do it for me.  I am still a member of the group, growing smaller and smaller, of people who like to hold a picture album on my lap and linger over the pictures, comparing them with pictures from a year ago, or a decade ago.  Look at how much she looks like her Grandfather!  The hairdos were so funny in the 80's!  Can you believe he's grown into such a tall young man?  Look at him when he was 3 years old!  I can't believe that's me!  I was so thin and my hair was so dark!

Pictures can still be printed but how many people are still getting photos printed?  Will we see the photo album going the way of the 8-track cassette soon?  When a teenager brings a boyfriend home will they have to turn on the computer to see the embarrassing pictures of their new girlfriend as a naked baby?  Will they have to go to the computer when their children are born to compare their features to those of their relatives?  Will they have to insert a CD into a slot to view their pictures from their vacation?  Or will all those thousands of pictures, forever preserved in digital form ever be looked at?  Isn't it so much easier to take an album off the shelf and leaf through it?  Isn't it fun when your kids come home to visit to pull out the old albums and sit with them and remember?

Granted it is easier and much faster to download digital pictures directly from a camera into a computer file.  It's takes more effort to choose pictures to be printed, pay the 15 cents or less for each one, put each into an album.  It takes some time and some dedication to keep at it.  But I truly think it is a worthwhile endeavor.  To linger over a picture, to relive the memory behind it, to study the images, to touch them, to compare and reflect is soul satisfying in a way that pictures on a disk or computer is not.  I hope there are young people who will continue this practice and that it won't become one of those bygone hobbies that only have meaning to the "old folks".  It would be a sad loss.