Remorse, as I’m using it here, means deep regret for a wrong committed. The wrong here is purely unintentional, and probably universally world-wide these days, but I am certain that culturally, we may regret thinking that digital photos will replace printed photos for documenting family history.
When my friend Cindy was here last week, I pulled out the 6 plastic shoeboxes of photos I have accumulated over the years. (As a side note, those 6 boxes of photos were miraculously spared from the destruction of the tornado we experienced in 2003.) I was looking for a picture of the three of us (Carol, Cindy and me) for the post I wrote a few weeks ago about a bit of our time together in the Air Force. Cindy and I spent several fun, laugh-filled hours going through the memories resurrected by the grainy, color faded snapshots of the first 20 of our 40 years of friendship together. The documentation included places we’ve experienced together, times we partied too hearty together, and family and friend moments we never want to lose the memory of.
There were no pictures of the last 20 years. That was about the time we began taking digital photos on smartphones. Rarely…very rarely…are any of those digital photos, stored safely and backup up on my computer, printed. They’re fairly well organized but honestly, there’s no way I’m going to sit with someone in front of my computer and go through thousands and thousands of digital photos there to see what might interest them.
Since I was there at the very beginning of the personal computer age (1984…and that’s a story I really need to write a post on another day) I’ve always been diligent about computer organization and back-up. I have a good system for documents and photos, organized by year. Every time I switched computers, I make sure documents and photos are transferred to special directories on the new computer in the folders for the years they were created. I still have files from the very beginning, and thankfully, the technology we’re using is still able to access those files.
Now though, after 20 years, that system is unwieldy. Documents were named when they were saved, and often I can find what I’m looking for by doing a search for a word in the document name. But pictures? That’s a whole ‘nother story. I never gave any of those photos names! The camera assigned file names are useless. And most of the time I can’t remember what year a photo I’m looking for might have been taken. The only workable solution is to actually look at all the photos in the File Manager. Have you ever done that? What a pain!
For this post, I wondered when I first started saving digital photos to my desktop computer. I found photos of me and Cindy during a visit she made to Missouri in 2004. I knew it was 2004 because that was the file folder name (Yay Laurie!). But there were 13 pictures of me and Cindy there…all snapped in quick succession to make sure we got one good photo. I obviously never looked at them. If I’d been keeping up, I would have deleted the 12 I didn’t like, then gave one of them a good file searchable name….”Laurie & Cindy 2004, MO Visit”. Now, it’s going to be a monumental task to go through all those digital pictures to make them useable and relevant to the future. I dread even thinking about starting that.
My point is this: Cindy and I, or Randy and I, or my mom and I, are never going to sit down together in front of my computer and go through pictures of our family and friendship history. Since the digital age, unless you’re committed and diligent about photographic history like Randy’s sister Kristine, it’s just too overwhelming. Kristine keeps up with it. She takes tons of photos of everything and everyone, but then puts in the time and effort to sort through and organize it all in a reasonable amount of time after she takes those pictures. It’s like a full-time job for her. 99.999% of us don’t have that kind of interest or commitment.
I intend, over the next several weeks, to sort through the old, printed photos we have. I’ll pitch the duplicates, blurry ones, those that have a finger in the photo, and those that are now completely meaningless. It’s eye-opening to think about how much money we paid for photos of scenery, people, and events we can’t even remember, much less care about. I think I threw away about 100 pictures of a Renaissance Faire we thought was pretty cool way back when. Now, through the magic of Google, I can look at 5,000 pictures of 500 different Renaissance Faires when and if I want them. They mean as much to me as the photos I took myself. (Yes, I know…I’m lacking that sentimental gene so many people have.)
Going through 6 shoeboxes does seem overwhelming. But going through thousands and thousands of digital photos in hundreds of computer directories makes me cringe. And I wonder: is it worth it? Without having any kids, does anyone really care? Is there any way to ensure that whatever medium we preserve them on in 2023 will still be viable in, say, 2030?
I have to confess that going through that box of photos with Cindy was one of the most joyful experiences of my retired life. Maybe the tedious, lonely work of organizing and preserving the meaningful digital photos we’ve taken over the last 20 years will, indeed, be worth it. And that may well be the legacy Randy and I leave to our extended family.
P.S. My second surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. I’m doing well, but will be glad to have this all behind me.
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