Photographic Memories

I have some time off in the next couple of weeks and I’m really looking forward to having some fun with my little family.  We’re planning day trips and activities locally so we don’t waste the time discussing what to do, ending up doing little of any consequence.  Nothing memorable.

I want us to have some great memories to look back on, for all of us, and though my husband doesn’t know yet, we’re going to have at least one day every two months where we do a “never forget” activity all together.  I made that decision today.

A lot of my memories are captured on film and it’s such a pleasure looking back through them all.  My parents have album after album lined up on their bookshelves and nothing beats getting them out on a lazy afternoon and flicking through them with my family.

I worry that that sort of entertainment will be lost to the new generation though, with the advent of digital cameras and online ‘albums’ on social networking sites.  Sure, we might all take lots more photos, and we might share them with many more people on the likes of Facebook or Snapfish, but they’re instant and then gone.  Ok, so technically all the pictures are still there, but the tendency to go back through them doesn’t exist.  Sometimes that is no bad thing when people just snap, snap, snap, knowing they’re not wasting any film, but then don’t bother filtering the 307 shots that look like an advanced spot-the-difference challenge.

The anticipation of your prints landing on the doorstep and recalling your holiday after the event disappeared when we started being able to review the picture seconds after it was taken and then move on. 

I’m making a pledge to go through all the photos I take every year and put the best into an “Album of the Year” so that we get the best of both worlds.  We’ll have the albums I love to look back on, and I’ll be able to cherry-pick the best of the I’ll-take-another-one-just-in-case shots to ensure the collection is as good as it can be.  And what fun I’ll have reminiscing as I scroll through them to create my retrospective albums!

I think I’m going to need another bookcase.