The Digital Age

The editor of an industry newsletter recently asked this question: Do you print all the photos you take? And, where? Home Printer? On-line service? Drug store? It really made me think about how photography has changed over the past 50+ years or so. Kodak has stopped manufacturing some, if not all, 35mm film so the camera that I love is now totally redundant. It's kinda sad. The negatives we used to store always gave me a feeling of total security with the knowledge that, even if I lost a print, I could always have reprints made from negatives. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my digital cameras - the flexibility, the resolution, the ability to take videos - in HD no less, but, the advantages of digital are also the disadvantages.

In the past I'd probably take a roll of film depending on the occasion, but now I take literally hundreds of photos just to make sure I've got the best shot without having to worry about the cost of developing the film and having prints made. Herein lies the challenge. There are waaaaay too many to print and unless the photo is blurred and there isn't even a tiny part of it that is good enough to crop, I have a hard time hitting the delete button. With editing software, we can save photos that would otherwise hit the trash can and, I for one, have a hard time deciding "which one is best". If my grandchildren are in any of them, they're all fabulous. So, I take lots of photos - I have about 9,000+ in iPhoto right now - and only few of them have been printed. "One of these days" I will go thru them all and print the best of the best, but the longer I wait the more I have to "go thru" and the more overwhelming the task is. It's quite a dilemma and I doubt I'm the only one with this challenge.

So, what's the solution...... Not sure there is one, but I DO know one thing - we have to print the important ones!!! I've said many times on Scrapbook Memories, that our children are growing up to be jpegs!! Digital images are not safe, either on your computer, an external hard drive, on a CD or DVD. Not safe on a CD? Let's just say that I can't play my favorite Beatles' CD any more because there's a tiny scratch on it, no matter how carefully I handled it. Look back at how things have changed over the past 10 years or so. The first digital cameras stored images on a floppy disk. Do you have a floppy disk drive in your computer today? Who's to say that CDs and DVDs won't go the way of the 8-Track. It's scary, isn't it....... We live in a digital age at a time when the younger generation thinks that e-mail is too slow! I wonder what they'll come up with next....

Have a great week! I'm off for some R&R, so I may not post for a few days........ but I'll be back, and I can even say that with an Austrian accent....LOL

Yours truly,
Julie :)