A Digital History
The last decade has been amazing with the advances in technology. I got my first digital camera in 2000 and never looked back. The ease of taking pictures makes it so the camera is never that far away. It is handy for moments you may want to capture. These days, it is easy to build a library of digital pictures going forward. A well designed folder structure, and you are set. We have a fairly robust collection of pictures on our computer from 2000 to today.
The great thing about the digital format, is the ease of access and viewing. The Xbox 360 lets us strea, all of our pictures to our living room and watch them on our TV. We actually use our TV more for viewing pictures and listening to music that we do watching television programs. That has always been the challenge with a large collection of pictures. How do you consume them? Photo albums lragely colletc dust on a shelf and slides never get viewed anymore. The digital format is ubiquitous. Once a pictures is digital, it lends itself to all sorts of use. It can be printed, modified, cropped, resized, published on the web, emailed, streamed to your TV, placed in a digital picture frame, used in a digotal slide show, etc.The versatility is limited only by the imagination.
I am thankful for many things pertaining to pictures today. Firstly, I am thankful that I live in a time and place of abundance that the luxury of owning a camera is not only possible, it is commonplace. I am thankful for the technology that makes it easy to take and view decent pictures. Kathy & I have quite a library of pictures and it is fun to be an archeaologist going back through the photographic layers in time. One of the things I am most thankful for though is the digitizing of our collection of photgraphs.
Charlie - Bonnie - Danny
Our oldest daughter Krystal is scanning all of the photographs in our albums, and when that is done, the loose box of snapshots will be done. This is a huge undertaking and will give us a wonderful opportunity to sort and share pictures from our past. Additionally, my siblings are scanning photographs and family slides and the amount of digital pictures is amazing. The portfolio is filling out with well over 60 years of photographic history. My brother Charlie has gone through most of dad’s slides and the pictures scanned very well. This was a project that converted a basically unusable format to a format many of us could use and enjoy.
I guess one other thing I should give thanks for, is that dad had the foresight to see the value of owning a camera years ago when it was not commonplace. Many family memories simply would have faded into obscurity without those pictures. I truly appreciate seeing pictures from my days of yore.
Here is to the completion of the digitizing of our pictures in the months ahead. I look forward to the new and innovative ways there will be in the days ahead to view and use our pictures.
A good snapshot stops a moment from running away. ~Eudora Welty