I have been consistent over the years, keeping up with our family albums. Our four children's firsts were documented, consolidated in three-inch black binders, protected in archival sleeves, decorated, notated, and stickered!
When each child graduated, they were given a personal album of their story, to send them on their way into adulthood, to remind them of their childhood, our fun adventures, and that their parents love them.
Something happened! The pixel happened. The ease of digital photos happened. I gave up my camera for my phone. I promised myself that I would keep up with the digital images and have them printed. One day turned into two decades!
It is overwhelming when it was supposed to be more convenient.
The challenge now is updating the missing years, which have caused problems for many of us. I thought images would always be there, saved somewhere. I was wrong. My attempts to retrieve digital photos have sent me into a vortex. Even photos I thought had been saved on a USB drive are now not recognized by newer computers. My attempts to keep digital images up to date cannot keep up with the rapid changes, and then there is iCloud and extra storage, and saving pictures to a hard drive.
There has been disappointment with corrupted files and lost images sucked into the vortex, never to be seen again. Lost pictures leave gaps and voids between the years. Fortunately, I saved small calendars with journaled dates for events, trips, birthdays, etc., but there are no images to go with them. I feel like I lost a treasure.
How exciting it is to find old black-and-white photos of our childhood or our parents; the nostalgia and history of those old documentaries become important, a quality lost in pixel technology.
I have been consciously trying to print the photos, being more selective and filing them chronologically in photo boxes. Whatever happened to 3x5 prints? They are not an option on the order form. Only two 4x6 prints will fit on an 8x11 sheet of craft paper!
One way I solved the problem of photos being too large was to shrink multiple photos onto 4x6 photo paper. It takes up less space and ink. I cut out the images to document the event, making cataloging more manageable and using the page space more effectively. It is an efficient way for me to journal visually.
True, I don’t need quite so many photos of adult children, not like when they were little, and everything they did was photographed. Now, THEY are having children, and we experience the multiple photos of the next generation as grandparents. Yes, our digital images have exploded with cuteness overload.
Twenty years behind in family journaling and record-keeping has made me feel this goal is an impossible task. Even when searching for help, I am led to advice on how to preserve memories digitally.
I want to do them the old-fashioned way with glue, scissors, and decorative papers. The selection of stickers is not what it used to be. My paternal grandmother is an inspiration. She drew, colored, and cut out her handmade stickers, which she glued on the black pages.
I would love to hear how you are handling this dilemma as you sort through your pixel images. Please feel free to leave your comments below.
