Today my daughter and I uploaded a bunch of family photos to the computer from when I was a kid. We had fun looking through them, and I had fun sharing some of my stories with her. I love this picture of me following my mom down the railroad track; it makes me think of simpler days and times. We lived in a small town when I grew up, and as kids we could walk or bike to most any place we wanted. You just don’t do that as quickly anymore.
But as I looked through the pictures, it got me thinking about how much easier taking and sharing pictures is today. These pictures were originally all slides, which my sister spent many hours scanning onto a disk. We uploaded that disk onto the computer, and there they were.
When we originally viewed those pictures with my family, my dad would get out the screen and the slide projector, and we would all sit down to look at the family photos together. There was no fast forwarding through ones that you weren’t interested in – and you couldn’t pull them out and take a quick look at them! Today, we sat down together in front of the computer and quickly browsed through the photos. If we want to look at them again, they’re right there. Now, I know not everyone took slides like our family. But still, taking pictures was much more of a process. I love this picture, which was taken outside our house on a snowy evening. It’s such a great picture – and my dad couldn’t quickly check if it looked good or edit it on the computer.
Today we take hundreds of pictures of one event, and many pictures of each pose – we can delete whatever doesn’t work out. Before, we might have taken one (or maybe a couple) of pictures. And if someone happened to look away, or start to walk out of the picture – oh well. You wouldn’t even find out what the pictures looked like for a few months, until you had a roll filled up and the pictures developed.
Still, there were some great pictures. Here’s one of our family car on a snowy road with our hand prints on the back window. My dad loved to take pictures of scenery, and most years there were pictures of a big snow storm. It makes me a bit nostalgic – we don’t get much snow where we live, and I remember having lots of fun as a kid in the snow. Of course, I also delivered papers first thing in the morning on some bitterly cold days, but somehow, now, I seem to mostly remember the positives. :)
This is a picture of us visiting Lake Huron and watching the sunset. I remember packing up and going to the beach after my dad was home from work. He was the official photographer, so he wasn’t actually in many of the shots.
I love the story those pictures tell, and I’m glad I can share those memories with my kids. I’m also glad that we can now upload and edit pictures right on our computer. Otherwise, these pictures would still be sitting in a slide carousel, gathering dust in my dad’s basement. :)
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