by Linda
Raise your hand if you are a reader.....
Count me in! My selection of reading material is as all over the map! (as is my photography) Call it eclectic. whatever. Lately, I have been drawn to non-fiction, specifically biographical or historical non-fiction. These books usually have several pages devoted to citing all the various sources used. Not only interviews but letters, journals and notes, thoughtfully written and carefully preserved. I am struck by the wonderful use of the English language found in some letters and journals written many, many years ago. Words were deliberately chosen and sentences flowed like poetry. I find myself unfamiliar with many words I have come across and once I look it up I usually wonder why it has been lost from use. I marvel at the volume of material that is available that documents our past and I wonder at reading about life as it was, written by the people that lived it.
Letter writing has almost completely vanished. Emailing/texting/IM/tweeting seem to be the norm now and how quickly do these items get sent to "trash". Maybe someday we will thank all the places on the internet that capture and store our data. (Facebook comes to mind but we all know how "real" the stuff people put on facebook is!)
Raise your hand if you are a writer.....
Are you one of those people that writes in a journal on a regular basis? Do you write poetry or stories? Do you have a blog? Do you regularly post to your blog?
I envy you. I am not a writer. I have many journals that are empty except for maybe a few pages and were bought with good intentions. It's just not for me.
So how are people in the future going to know about our life today?
I am a photographer. I do have a huge collection of pictures that were taken throughout many of the years of my adult life and often on an almost daily basis. This is where I had an "ah-hah!" moment. I have a visual journal! The problem is the great majority reside on my computer. Like my picture above, it's obvious what is going on but is it obvious why it was important to me? In the future, the girls in the picture will know it is them but may wonder why I took this picture.
It's time to get them off the computer and tell my story.
There are a number of ways to get pictures printed or made into books so I'll let you decide what you like best. Let me just encourage you to get your pictures printed, made into a book/scrapbook, some way to fully express your thoughts and ideas. Just do it. These pictures come from your heart, future generations will treasure them.
And BTW-you can make a book out of your blog. (Blurb) Do it.
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6 comments:
We have grown so comfortable leaving our images on the computer and never printing them. I look back at all the scrapbooks I have made over the years and I am thrilled I have them. They document my daughter's growing up years and many fun vacations. We don't look at them often but I know exactly what album to go to if I am looking for a certain picture.
Print and print more I say, even if you just put them on the fridge! Great reminder!
My family just got back from South Dakota from a family vacation, and I already have 8 photos printed and framed up on the wall, and have a book planned for the rest of them. I couldn't agree more about getting images off the computer and into albums and books.
Oh, yes, we definitely need to PRINT! It seems to be rare these days. Like Sarah, I have been a scrapbooker for over 15 years and my scrapbooks would be the first thing I'd grab if we had a fire. Not my phone or my computer -- my scrapbooks. Not only are the pictures there but the stories that go along with them. The photos on your phone or on your computer are just that, photos. The stories will be lost someday. And it may be sacrilege for a photographer to say but the stories are even more important than the photos. So we need to print the photos but we also need to record the stories. A book from your blog, if you're a regular blogger, is a great idea!
Oh I so agree...I finally began printing my photography and framing them, now I enjoy them daily. I also had one year of my blog printed, what fun that is, I need to do it again because it is the story of my life in word and photos.
oh you are preaching to the choir linda!! yes indeed i print my pictures. i believe it's so important to have a tangible record of our lives. for ourselves and the future generations.
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