Remember, way back in the olden days, when you had to take the film from your camera to a store to be developed? And you’d have to wait at least an hour to see what images you’d ended up with? And it was exciting and fun and you had scads of photos and piles of negatives in boxes in your basement?
I have always enjoyed photography and have a far too well-documented adolescence and now that we’ve all been in the digital age for a while, I take tonnes of picture of our family. I post them on my blog, on Facebook, file them on my computer, and….welll, most of them just sit there. I try to develop them with some decent regularity but have recently let it slide and have a year’s worth of photos on my external hard-drive waiting to be dealt with.
I used to scrapbook, but you can chalk that up to another hobby that fell by the wayside now that I have three children (like showering and recreational reading) since it takes too much effort to haul out of my supplies, spend an evening working on ONE PAGE, then have to clean up the mess and put the supplies away again.
This year I jumped on the “let’s make a photobook!” bandwagon and used Tiny Prints to make an album for my eldest daughter. I was really pleased with the quality and the finished product and swore that I would make a book for each girl, each year, chronicling their lives, and that I’d work on them as the year went on so I wouldn’t fall behind. Yeah, hasn’t happened. I’ll probably get the photobook bug again around the Christmas season and stay up until three a.m. for a couple weeks getting them all finished in time. The best laid plans…
How do you manage your family photos? Are you an old school scrap booker, a diligent developer who places the images in albums, a photobook maker, or an “I have 13 years’ worth of photos on my computer and don’t know where to begin” kind of gal? Any recommendations for taking care of these precious pictures?
What do we do with the deluge of images? It’s hard to elevate one as the iconic emblem of a period in your family history. I learned my family stories at the big event dinners, always at Grandma and Grandpa’s, where the branches of my clan gathered to celebrate by eating too much. The kids would end up squished together on the couch pouring over Grandma’s ancient leather and gold embossed photo albums. They were the kind of albums with the sturdy black pages curling in slightly at the corners with the little black anchors coming unglued on a couple of the pictures.
There we all were; the Aunts and Uncles and the Cousins. The backyards, the cars, pets, tables laid with food and candles lit. We must have looked at those old albums a hundred times. Because there were only two of them each photo held a story, the details depended on which adult was hanging around nearby to answer our endless questions. They were mostly shots of us hamming it up for the camera.
I have made my own chronological albums up until our first digital camera. Now like everyone else I will have to become a master editor. So that when the Grandkids come over here someday I’ll plug the laptop into the TV and let my 2 albums tell the story of our fondness for one another and the adventures we shared. The family legends will again be past on to the next generation.
I too have haven’t kept up with developing photos and putting them into an album and I was so good at doing that years ago. I will have to sit down one day and start getting organized and start making those albums as I don’t want to loose those memories. Too funny with technology we get further ahead and yet we loose patience to sit down and make those beautiful albums that our kids will cherish one day.
I have decided to ensure that each child has one album from birth to 1 year that is actual photos. Which I am proud so say has been completed for my first son who is currently 20mths old.
After that I plan to try and make an album from 1 year to school age that will be a photobook style for each child. After that no plans yet 🙂 But I have 3ish years to figure that out!
However I still love actually photographs so I hope to have an ongoing album that I will just fill as the time goes by with random pictures of the kids, us, vacation ect. and when it is full start a new one!
Oh lady, I KNOW!! I’ve decided to let myself off the hook on this one though. I have perfectionist tendencies, so I loathe doing anything halfway, or that I can’t finish… I wanted to make the books too – one for each kid, for each year, blah, blah, blah, but the truth is, I know I won’t get it done. For me, I think it’s better to just try to delete the crap pictures as often as possible (the bad blurry ones, or eyes-closed shots) so at least I have only the (several million) good ones I would potentially “print.” (Yeah, right.) Maybe I’ll make a big fat book for each 10 year mark. Or something. Or maybe not.
Oh god, I suck.
I am a SLAP booker
fast, messy and way behind even on this.
I could totally have written this… if I had a minute, that is!
My poor kids are going to feel totally neglected, unless they ever see my hard drive.
I really need to get on with something like this – I think we have a good 7 years to catch up on as of tomorrow, when Girl 6 turns into Girl 7!