A Rose Is A Rose Is A Rose!

Things are as they are, not as they should be!

Celebrate Your Memories

Every now and then, I open this drawer and look at the stack of Photo Albums. I pick up a few and flip through the album pages and let the memories dance live in front of me. I smile indulgingly, I wonder at the changes, I look at something a bit lovingly… and mostly I am transported back through time and space to many old memories. And I feel happy and rejuvenated at the experience. 
And I see my child doing the same too, asking questions, remembering something, sharing his memory of that moment…

Yesterday’s one such happy moment, made me ponder about the changing times, regarding photographs.

Earlier, we had cameras with film roles which could capture 24 or 36 pictures. Each shot was taken with care, everybody was asked to smile and look straight into the camera and a perfect shot was taken. As soon as all the pictures were captured, the same was given for developing at a studio and finally the memories of that occasion were sealed and preserved in the album. These albums would give innumerable reasons to remember and cherish, smile and laugh at the memories, to all in the family and friends, relatives and acquaintances.

And today, we have digital cameras. No worry of the expensive film roles and with the memory card in place, you can click a million pictures at one go. Click, click, click, click till the cows come home! And predominantly, the pictures are clicked one after the other without blinking an eye and each an every expression, movement of the subject(s) is captured. The numbers of images captured  are so much so that an animated movie can be made with these pictures. (Animation is created by the illusion of movement, as each drawing differs slightly from the one before it).

And then what happens?
Well, these pictures are either downloaded on to the computer or remain in the memory of the camera… literally captured! Only few in the family or friends get to see them once in a odd while but mostly they remain hidden and mostly forgotten about their very existence. Enough of my friends practice this!!

My Take :
Today, we have the option of seeing what we have clicked, unlike the earlier commonly used conventional cameras. So click till you get that perfect shot for a subject/setting, even if the number of pictures reach a few 100.
Download the pictures on your computer.
Give yourself a few minutes and select the best pictures.
Save these in a new folder and copy them on a storage device and get them printed at a Studio/Color Lab or print them on your own printer!

Do that and you will love the experience.

There’s no better way to relive your memories than to create a scrapbook taking you through each phase, each stage, each occasion of your life, with family and friends.

So its, Cheese… Click… Celebrate!!

Celebrate your memories. 🙂

Image Courtesy : http://farm4.static.flickr.com

17 Responses

  1. totally agreed… i once crashed my computer and lost lotsa memories on them. I do make DVD of the pics now as backup.

    But this is a nice idea of printing pics. I should do it, or convince my bro to do it…

  2. I agree completely with you! The joy of holding a picture, feeling the paper and rewinding the memories is a wonderful experience. Even though digital cameras have made clicking thousands of pictures and viewing in comp has made it easier and cost effective, the joy derived from viewing prints is unmatched. Yes, I click a lots of pic but makes sure to make an album out of the selected best 🙂

  3. Agree with you totally!! I had clicked tons of pics but never thought of getting them printed. But my mom likes them only in print and hence recently we got like 400+ pics printed 🙂 It is always fun to hold the paper printed photo, rather than just see it on computer.

  4. A beautiful soul has a beautiful face camera notwithstanding.

    I think accessibility of the picture when you want it matters a lot.
    I have about 16 gb of precious memories – now imagine if I had to print them and frame them !!lol.

    So for me – I want my memories to be always “dowloadable” where ever I am in any corner of the world…coz you never know when you miss someone.

  5. I miss the excitement of getting it printed and the wait to see if it did come out good. But then again there have been those blacked out rolls and the shaken photos that makes me thank anything digital.

    With the move to cloud computing, guess it’s only apt that our memories float around like a cloud..

    Getting poetic ; must be getting too late for me 🙂 ..

    Good Post..

  6. Yes,technology is progressing very fast and the only alternative is to catch up with it, lest one feels left out.But,it was a different feel when we felt the pictures taken by the box cameras, it was a pleasure organising the photo album.
    We have, however,framed pictures of most of the ocassions starting with my daughters pictures from her first birthday and my parents in black-white pictures.
    It is a treat.

  7. great post Shilpa..I was discussing the same thing with my bro yest..due to digicam, we now miss the fun of viewing those photo albums in their physical state..so many sites are there where we upload the images, or we simply save them in a folder; view them when we are getting bored and that too; alone..

    I miss that era..

  8. When I do not carry the camera with me, those moments remain with me for a longer time. Sometimes I question my wisdom in accepting the digicam gift! Though I love to click..

  9. These digicams have taken away the sheen from photographs a whole lot. Its like – too many clicks spoils the shot (for want of a better word/phrase):-))

    I usually take copies but sometimes out of laziness, forget! Only thing I like in this digital age are the videos..now those make for some really hilarious & fun memories!

  10. Its no wonder that i miss our old camera……though i do try to get the pictures printed every now & then but still am never able to keep up with the pace we click …..cos as u said no expensive rolls to buy so click click click u go…… well good that i read this….may b tonite i’ll sit and sort out and visit the photo studio tomorrow…

    🙂

  11. Fantastic suggestion Shilpa 🙂
    The idea of keeping hard copies to flip through those magical moments is something I totally agree to. We can definitely make good use of the ease of clicking as many pictures we please thanks to the technology available.

    Wonderful idea to create a scrapbook 🙂

    Keep up the good work.

    Cheers!!

  12. Give yourself a few minutes and select the best pictures.. . .. . .
    That is the key word.
    When people thrust their album under you nose and say “see see look at the pictures that we too when we went to ….” I find most of them repetitive.

  13. The last part, involving your take reminds me of Stanley Kubrick who also advocated the same, pick the best from a heap of the same.

    True, as a child I remember how my parents used to shout “Smile” a lot, but now that word is technically not being heard anywhere thanks to digital cameras. I don’t know what’s in store for us in the future!

    Good post 🙂

  14. What a beautiful post, Shilpa! You echoed my thoughts.
    You know my brother and I gifted our parents on their 30th anniversary a collage of some of the wonderful moments they lived in their 30 years of marriage and I cant tell you how much the two of loved the whole process of going through all the photos, screeing, scanning printing..it was like having all those moments come alive all over again!

    Memories are to be celebrated..so true!

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