Can we talk?

Photographs

         Think about the evolution of cameras in our lifetimes. The older you are the more you've seen. We've gone from Polaroid being cutting edge to Instamatic to disc camera to digital. Remember threading the film through the older cameras? If you got it in correctly, you could get an extra shot or two.

         I thought about this while I was watching a 1941 black and white movie in which Gloria Swanson struggled to get film in her camera on board the private ship (not a yacht). The movie was Father Takes A Wife, also starring Desi Arnaz as a handsome young stowaway. I remembered that we have many more pictures of the kids in my family now, all preschoolers, than we had of our whole first 18 years and beyond. Future family historians should have better records if these photos are saved. If they just stay in someone's phone or Ipad until it's replaced, they won't linger.

         I went through all our old photos, the albums my mother kept, the ones I kept, the loose photos that belonged to my great aunt, then my grandmother, then me. I scanned them all, identified them, and sorted them on my desktop. I'll have to make arrangements to save it on another hard drive. I don't know what future technology will be able to use them. I don't know what relatives to leave them to. They may just die with me and the computer.

         At any rate, I can make some pleasant PowerPoint presentations for anniversaries and retirement parties or family tree displays. I like to watch a little slide show every now and then, the old pictures, combined with digital ones, according to subject matter. They do conjure up memories. I'm glad pictures are so easily available now to anyone who can carry a device. If they will store them somewhere safe, they'll treasure them someday.