Many, many years ago (more than 30, Yikes!) I became a photographer. Not professionally, but a photographer of memories. Even as a teenager I was sticking my camera in front of friend's and family's faces. The quality was not that great, but the memories were being preserved.
Had I not gotten prints made I wouldn't have the memories I have now of:
my youth group's mission trip to Canada in 1984...
a much younger version of everyone in my family...
my sweet little Tiffy Sue (who happened to be a boy)...
our annual old-fashioned Sunday at my church
or our annual New Year's Eve roller skating with my entire church
I didn't realize then how much I would appreciate those images today. Many were destroyed over the years for different reasons and I now wish I had them back. But thanks to my mother being a pack-rat, she kept many that I thought I had thrown away.
As I sit and look at my albums and my stacks of photos that have yet to be put in albums verses my stack of CD's and DVD's, I question why I stopped getting prints made. I've always taken great pride in preserving my images in the correct way. Acid free papers and pens. Acid free albums. Then something happened.
Six years ago I got my first digital camera, and like many others of you out there I started storing my images on discs instead of having them printed. It saved space and money so it was a no-brainer. But is saving space and money worth it? It hasn't been for me.
For the last few years I have stared at my growing pile of discs with a sadness. Yes, sadness. I love the feel of prints. I love the look of prints. I love being able to open an album or thumb through photos when I am feeling nostalgic. Something about firing up the computer and popping in a CD just doesn't do it for me.
What happens when the electricity goes out? What happens when the CD starts to wear down and I lose images (of this I was unaware until recent). What happens 50 years from now when my grandchildren and great-grandchildren want to look at old photos but can't because they don't have the correct computer or computer software? Believe it or not, what we have now will some day be just as obsolete to my grandchildren as a reel-to-reel is to my children.
For these reasons I am making it my personal goal to start having prints made of all of my digital images. They don't have to be professional or color corrected. They don't need fancy editing to make them look better than they are. They simply need to be printed so that one day my family can sit around a shoe box and remember the "good ol' days." After all, isn't this why we take silly snapshots or have our family photos taken in the first place? It's to have something in the future to remember the past.
This is not a ploy to get you in for professional pictures, though I would encourage you to do so, but, rather, is a gentle nudge to get your images off of your camera or CD and into your hands. There's no better time than the present! Let's do it together!
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