This past weekend, I went through some pictures from 15-20 years ago in preparation for a friend’s wedding. My friends has a wedding website and might also be projecting the pictures at the celebration, me thinks.
It was fun to look at old memories but also it took some work to even access some of the photos. Our computers didn’t seem to want to help us get the pictures off of the picture CDs.
Some of the pictures were in a box and some where on the CDs that film developers used to give you when you picked up your prints.
For the most part, these pictures were not taken on a digital camera, but there were digitized. I am almost certain that I used some of the some of these pictures on my MySpace account and my Facebook page in the early days. Good times, those were. We were all so innocent then.
Looking through the pictures though, one thought really stuck me. These pictures are really pretty bad looking. Some of the badness is because they were taken before the days when we could just delete badly taken photos, we just got all of our shots developed without knowing what they looked like. Some of the badness is because film technology just isn’t what it is today. Some of the badness thought is because the film has already started to degrade.
Many of the pictures that I am thinking of are only from the early to mid 2000’s which in my brain doesn’t seem like all that long ago.
Some of the pictures are from when I first met my husband which I think of as pretty recently but is actually almost 14 years ago.
I have read articles where celebrities say that they won’t publish pictures of their children because they don’t have their children’s permission. I can understand this point of view. I sometimes debate this idea in my head. I ask myself, “Is it okay for me to put my children’s images out into the public without them having a mature idea of what providing what giving consent of their images means?”
I also understand that these individuals, as celebrities, have different concerns than I do, as a non-celebrity. But . . .
After viewing my 15 year old photographs saved on various media (print, CD, USB drives) I feel now that I should share these images now if I wish for people to enjoy them as I do. I feel more than ever that these images won’t stand the test of time. They are meant to be enjoyed now. The pictures are going to be forgotten and will possibly degrade if they aren’t shared now. Plus everyone is just so, so cute right now.
So here are a few pictures from the week leading up to Thanksgiving and the weekend afterward. We spent the weekend with just the four of us, because we had colds, especially earlier in the weekend. Patrick had sometime off of school before Thanksgiving because of school conferences so we have been having various playground and zoo adventures.
Henry does not like wearing pants right now, just shorts, so we have still been doing outdoor activities but we have to be conscious of the temperature outside. The no-pants thing is a little bit limiting right now, but hopefully he is working through his feelings about pants and being in control.
In my past, I have had people give me indirect and occasionally direct criticism about their perceived ideas about the amount time I have spent on social media. Let me tell you, it takes me much longer to post pictures on my blog. I have to make the images smaller in size and the process of uploading pictures takes longer. I think it is it worth it though. I want to share my stories and my family’s stories with you. I enjoy sharing my life experiences. I hope you enjoy them.
Happy Advent Season,
Katie
Great post Katie! I always enjoy seeing pictures of and hearing about your adventures. And nice haircut Patrick-Love the streaks!
I think that “thoughtful sharing” is an appropriate way to indirectly control “conspicuous consumption.” It’s far easier to take a photo or video of a moment now than it ever has been in the past. Many of us walk around with full-featured, high-resolution photo and video cameras in our pockets all day every day, and making an image only takes a button click or two. Social media has really lowered the barriers for sharing those images. It becomes easy to overshare. Sighted humans are attracted to images and espeically moving images, so we consume them as fast as they can be produced.
Taking time to curate images and memories has a great deal of value. It allows one to tell a story with purpose and impact, which can be lost in the typical sea of images that is social media. Sure, sometimes it is nice to be able to just quickly share an important or interesting moment, but any more, I share those sorts of things on a short text message thread to the people who would be most interested in the moment, and then later curate a story or set of images to post on the blog for a wider audience.
Regarding consent to post images, I have always felt like it is less of a problem for images that wouldn’t be considered embarrassing. I always reason that it would be easy enough to go and remove a post or image that an older child finds offensive. Again, curation helps here, as it is inserting time into the process where one might consider whether a story or image is appropriate to share. That is lacking froim social media.
Thanks for the fun stories, as always. Happy Monday!
Beautiful, Katie! Thanks for sharing!
It was nice to see where Bren proposed to you. Very nice scenery! Great Photos too.