Today’s prompt for Blogtober (yep, almost halfway through the month and I’m still going!) was old photos. And I thought about digging through my box of photos from my university and working in France days, or even going to my mum and dad’s house and having a look through the old albums. But then I’ve already shared a few of the old beauties on this blog before – like this classic from my 11th birthday in 1989…
Or this one of when I cut my own fringe when I was two.
I suppose I could have just posted these pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch in my living room in 1998…
Or I could have gone with something a bit more recent like this one of Tim Minchin in tight shiny trousers at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009…
But it got me thinking, how much the way we take photographs and record our memories has changed in my lifetime, and how different it will be for our children.
My parents have hardly any photographs from their childhoods, a handful at most. My entire childhood is preserved in about 10 photo albums that live at my parents house. And the four years that Toby has been alive, and the two years of Gabe’s life so far, have been captured in literally tens of thousands of photographs that mostly exist nowhere but on my external hard drive.
There are of course, lots of pictures of the boys, and our family memories here on this blog. And I hope perhaps that they will be able to look back at it when they are older in the same way I look at old photo albums. I know that quite a lot of my childhood memories are not real memories at all, but just memories of the stories told when I look at old photographs. I wonder what it will be like for Toby and Gabe, when so much of their lives have already been recorded.
Perhaps if I didn’t have this blog I wouldn’t take so many photographs. I know we probably wouldn’t have all the family pictures that I take for Me & Mine every month. I have been taking weekly pictures for Living Arrows for four years now, and I’m sure without it weeks would go by without me taking the boys’ picture.
It’s so easy now though isn’t it, when almost everyone has a camera in their pocket? I’m sure our children will find it hard to believe we actually had to remember to take a camera with us if we wanted to take pictures. And even stranger couldn’t see the picture until weeks or months later when you finished the film and took it to be developed, never quite sure what you would see.
I really should get more of our photographs printed though, or made into a photo book. I can’t imagine sitting at a computer to look through old pictures with my children, especially when I’ve taken so many of them. And although my pictures are backed up in a few different places there’s always that fear that you’ll lose them somehow.
What do you with your old photos? Do you print them or do they all live on your computer or in your phone?
This is the fifteenth post in my #Blogtober series – you can read the rest of the posts here.
I’ve had the same thoughts about photos and each year I have a family photo album printed. I keep on thinking I’ll start it online in January and add photos each month but each December I find myself going through the 100s of photos. However I do enjoy the albums and it is nice to have something to hold and look at. I’ll look back to see if you get some great suggestions.
Ha ha love the DIY fringe pic!!! I need to get better at printing pics !!Though the teenagers are becoming a bit photo averse of late!! #Blogtober17
I have albums full of old photos from my childhood and my dad has boxes. Now all of our photos are stored on computers, CD’s and hard drives…
Benedict Cumberbatch in your living room did make me say wow!
Ooo I promise I didn’t read this post before writing my own but we have written such similar things! I have hundreds and hundreds of photos and I have a huge amount printed out. I stopped at some point though and need to get around to print out some more so that I have albums for the boys. Computers are great but sitting and looking through albums is so so much better! #blogtober17
Erm you are going to have to explain Benedict!!! And can get come sit in my living room please?! I make digital photo albums of my kids each year which I get printed. I’ll show Benedict if he comes rou d! #blogtober17
I was friends with Benedict at university – I haven’t seen him for 20 years though unfortunately!
It is hard nowadays as we take soooo many photos, how do you decide which ones to print?! I was good with Tyler, I have made photo books of his baby years, so probably should do the same for Lily.
#Blogtober17
I often think about how there are so many more photos of my kids than there are of me as a child. We try to make a photobook every year of the best ones, the rest stay on our computer or on Cloud storage.
We have a Dropbox account. We pay it for it yearly. This is where we store millions of our photos and I use it for my blog work too.
Eventually whenever I get time, I do create an album for reach of my children. My mum did too. It’s nice to look at certain events in an album. #blogtober