Pics

How we did it back in the olden days...

   I spent a little time the other day with a pile of old pictures dating as far back as the thirties, digging through them and posting to Facebook many of the ones I thought my friends and family might be the most interested in seeing.
   When my Dad passed away recently, several boxes of old family photographs ended up at my house. Only recently have I had the time to give them any more than a cursory glance.
   Many of them were pictures from my childhood, generally when I was on vacation, either in Calgary or Gibsons, B.C.
These pictures always evoke a visceral response, a strong longing to be in those places once more, as a child. I've been able to go back to many of those spots in the pictures as an adult but, obviously, they are not the same and never will be. It would be preferable to simply crawl back inside any of those pictures and just resume my life all over again. It is apparent from talking to some of my relatives that they wish this was a possibility as well.

How it's done these days

   Up at the top of this blog is an old Brownie camera. We had one that was essentially identical this one. These were one of the most popular types of camera back in the 40's, 50's and 60's. This camera took many of the photographs I found among Dad's albums.
   There is a difference between the black-and-white photos of yesteryear and the digital ones of today. The old ones can be held. Having to take them somewhere and get them developed produced something that could be arranged, collected, written on, stored and moved. Sometimes this meant they got tattered around the ages, or creased. Often this did little to deter from their value, much as laugh lines give a face personality.

Old photo albums

   Of course, old photos are more difficult to share. That is the blessing of today's digital world, wherein it is possible to instantly convey images from person to person and group to group. The problem with digital pics, however, is that they are almost too easy and convenient. There is virtually no need to make sure that a picture has purpose or composition, it is easy enough to simply snap away with abandon and then discard what you don't like.

Digital picture frame

   It was a marriage of these two technologies that I was engaged in the other day, finding old photos and taking pictures of them with a digital camera and then sharing them. To the vast majority of my Facebook friends, I'm sure the pics were pretty insignificant. To the chosen few, though, I hope they provoked some of the same feelings they did for me. If they did, it was something  I was happy to do.