photographs you can hold

In September of 2007 I borrowed my grandmother's wedding photo to scan it and blow it up to display at our wedding. My brother touched it up and made it look way better but it crashed on my computer after the wedding and now I'm the only person that has the digital file of my nana's wedding which I remedied this morning by sending to my family via email.

In November of this year, our family is gonna celebrate my Nana's birthday and we're trying to scan pictures of her for another slideshow. So this Saturday morning, since my internal clock wakes me up early anyway, I decided to just scan some pictures and try to find more of my nana for the slideshow.

Of course, when opening the jar that is your photo boxes, you start finding all kinds of stuff to scan and email. Ohmygosh, Jerry totally needs this picture of us in the pool when we were kids and then it just goes overboard and next thing you know you've got a giant pile of photos to scan in addition to the ones you have to scan that belong to your dad that you've had for like a year and really should return.

What's the point of having a great photo you can't share? Wouldn't Alex and Nancy totally get a kick out of that photo of us playing "Bibleopoloy"? Wouldn't Michelle love the photo of us in TJ when we got that fish on our foot tattoo that everyone thought was stupid when I suggested it but loved it right after? But I wonder if all of the cyberworld has to see it. Like just emailing the person should be enough.

The other part is that of digital vs physical copies of photos. Obviously I take lots of pictures but I have zero desire to print any of them. Some of them I feel I should because they're important like wedding pictures, oh yeah, still haven't printed those and oh yeah, still haven't printed the pictures of Angie and Lyla that I wanted to gift my sisters with.

I want digital. I want ALL the photos I have to be on my laptop. Why? So I can see them whenever I want, because sitting in that box downstairs, I'm never gonna open that box and I sit in front of this machine every day. If I feel like a good cry, I can look at Nana pictures. If I feel like a smile, I'll bust out some pics of my dog or nieces. Or both.

It's easy nowadays to go digital, we all have digital cameras, even digital cameras on our phones and can share photos instantly. Does it make a photo less important the fact that I can so easily throw it in the trash and empty the trash and it's as if it never happened? It also piles up the pictures since you just take picture after picture after picture 'til you get one you like but you still feel bad about tossing the bad ones so you get a billion photos of the cats on your shoulder.

So what's the moral of this story? Take lots of pictures. Back them up. Print them. Don't print them. Share them. Scan pictures you don't have digitally. After all, you only live once, might as well document this one life you have as best you can.