Remember sitting down and taking out photo albums? Thumbing through history and even trying to remember faces of family gatherings? I look at my own photo albums and am reminded of what I rode like when I was a kid. Having fun, sunny summer days with totally un-protective headgear by today’s standards. I love looking through those photos.
But there is a black out of photos. The digital age. Those photos are hidden in a desk drawer somewhere. A thumbdrive that slams into the back of the desk drawer each time I open it. Those photos don’t see the light of day.
You can never have enough photos of your horse.
Show Me Your Photo
Has anyone ever said to you, “Show me a picture of your horse?”
Yes they have?
And you probably said, “YES! I can do that <your finger madly swiping and scrolling through years of photos on your phone>” here’s one of me that my mom took, She was holding the phone the wrong way.”
The viewer squints into the phone. “Hmmm nice photo. Is that your mom’s thumb?”
Just kidding.
No one ever says that. Well, maybe not.
But I do love looking through old albums and they often come out when I’m feeling nostalgic and remembering former horses and our travels by bicycle.
I remember my folks getting a poster sized black and white print of me that I hung on my wall, unframed for-ev-er. It was the best thing I ever owned. Well, one of the best things.
It wasn’t professionally done, my mom took the photo. But it was of me, on my horse Scotia, at a local horse show, and it was of me and my horse, and I loved it and cherished it and it was me of me on my horse!
As I think of this i wonder why i didn’t keep it. That was 40-ish (OMG!) years ago. I Remember taping it to a piece of cardboard, the ends curled up and then pinning into the wall. When it was religated to the trash the image was faded and the edges were brown and torn.
Show Off Your Photos
Now however, images seem to be relegated to a small screen, the size of note card. Each quadrant enlarged sequentially to show the pixels stretched enough to be examined. Where’s the fun in that?
I have CDs full of images from recent trips and thumb drives of my son’s life growing up. They are hidden in a drawer. And Who knows how to get a CD read these days.
A hundred years from now will you have to go to a museum to see how people used to view images? Find someone with a machine to read CDs, thumb drives, floppy discs, remember those? no one does. I want to have pictures up on my walls to celebrate and be reminded of my life and the lives of others. To show off accomplishments. To share and be reminded of where I was.
Maybe now, it is the post-it note sized, social media sharing photos that grab the most attention, and soon, before we know it there will be a new craze to intice us and photographic images may be replaced by occular implants or virtual screens.
I would like to have a tangible image.
One that I can hold in my hands and reminisce about the time when… you can fill in your own story here.
There is no doubt there are a lot of pictures out there thanks to the obuquitous phone camera (thank you Apple) which makes picture taking a daily occurance.
AND
There are a lot of picture sharing apps, Instagram, Facebook for example, for people to view and see your images. I think it is important for people to see our photos. They should be displayed in our homes, places of work, and shared
not
dumped in a drawer on a CD, DVD, or thumb drive. These images have to be accessable to all to show future generations what our world is like. Get them out on your walls or in photobooks.
