The Digital Dinosaur

Pressure. Sometimes I think this digital world we're in has just added one more element of pressure to our already over-scheduled lives as mothers. It's not good enough to attend every extra curricular event in your son or daughter's lives, but you must snap 2-3 frames every 30 seconds to document that child's participation. Then- you get home and download 200 pictures of Johnny's Christmas program. The sad thing is, you've now not only missed viewing Johnny's program with your own eyes because you're too busy fiddling with your camera, but now those 50 images sit on your computer never to see the ink of a printer or the pages of a scrapbook.

Enter Facebook- ah- it's great, you can share your snaps with friends and family- every week is a new album, comments, likes...BUT how many of those priceless images have you actually printed to preserve for yourself and your children?

In multiple conversations I've had with people over the last few weeks, the topic of digital files has come up. Things like how their personal computers are filling up with pictures that are never printed, how much time it takes to download and organize images (let along actually get them uploaded and printed). One friend who will go unnamed has yet to print any of her vacation pictures from the past 3= years which at this point would be a pretty hefty hunk of change to drop all at once.

This is the part where I tell you how wonderfully organized I am- how my own treasured personal snap shots are files, organized, stored on multiple media forms and kept in a safe-deposit box for safe keeping. Unfortunately my organization for my personal photos is no better, in fact my second son's scrapbook stops suddenly at about 5 months old- which coincidentally coincides with about the time I started doing portrait photography more seriously. Maybe you too have a few boxes of old negatives stored away in your closet- how many times have YOU pulled one of those negatives out to get a reprint made? If you're like me- about as often as I've been up there to dust off that shelf.

Even sadder is the future of many of those digital images stored on our computers. This photo on Flickr is quite amazing when you think of all the different kinds of storage technology has given us in just a few years. When's the last time you used a 3.5" floppy disc? Even own a computer that will accept one? How much longer before the disc that holds your daughter's baptism photos is obsolete? Think of the pictures that will be lost to not only your immediate family archives, but to future generations that may treasure the images even more than you do. There are labs that no longer offer developing of negatives.

This post is meant to be a kick in the pants to myself and to those of you that are just as guilty as I- whether it's negatives stored in a box in your closet or digital files stored in a folder on your computer, print a few of those pictures! You just never know when technology may fail you. Digital is great--- but there is no substitute for holding a print in your hand or looking at a wall portrait hung on your wall.