TREASURE THE MOMENTS YOU CAPTURE
Brisbane Courier Mail
17 January 2012
Has the rise of the digital age seen the fall of the printed photo?
We can now snap away with our mobile phones, save on virtual photo albums, upload to Facebook, share instantly and globally, zoom and crop, even Photoshop.
The digital revolution has literally put all this power in the palm of our hands.
And there are many virtues to these virtual albums. They save paper, save ink, save space, save money and save time.
Some photos are permanently saved on websites in cyberspace, and unlike printed photos, their original quality never diminishes.
Gone are the days of my weekly visits to the corner chemist who would take my roll of film and print every
photo, only some of which would make it into the family photo albums.
Gone are the days of sitting in physical photo shops trying to edit and print enlargements to be framed, so that the photos are looking at me rather than me looking for them.
But there is a down side to uploading.
With almost annual upgrades to mobile phones, many photos and videos are being deleted to ‘save space’ or not transferred to a new SIM card. If they were not shared, those magical moments are gone forever.
When I was a social worker, photo albums were a pivotal prompt in marriage counselling and preventing youth suicide. Photos tended to be taken on happy occasions and provide undeniable evidence of ostensibly happy days. Of course, such smiling faces could also mask an inner disquiet and could compound the pain of ‘what went wrong?’ But these
albums helped save marriages, fanning the embers left by the original flames of love, so that they can shine through the overshadowing dark clouds.
The therapeutic power of photo albums and family videos was evident when I became widowed and I would wake up to the sound of my children laughing (not crying) as they replayed family videos and remembered their mother’s life (not death). So much so that I have transferred all videos to DVDs before their original quality erodes any further.
With the recent passing of my father after a decade of Alzheimers, the recent memory of watching a mountain man slowly regress to a dependent infant was overwhelming. But our family grief was again buoyed by the therapeutic power of photos and videos – the way he deserved to be remembered.
Without these vivid reminders, only this shrinking candle would be etched in the memory of his children,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
At times of funerals, photo albums and family videos are dusted off like some vintage wine, instantly increasing in value and attracting centre stage like some precious jewel to be preserved and protected.
With other major milestone events such as birthdays and anniversaries, slide shows of the happiest memories continue to be the life of the party.
While the nostalgic gathering around tangible photo albums may be replaced with two-dimensional images on screens, we need to be careful that all the clicks are not habitually deleted with each upgrade. While the focus has shifted to sharing them with others, we need to remember that we are bottling a spirit that we may one day need to drink.