I’m in this perpetual state of clearing my room. There is, I admit, too many things. In my distress, I wanted to throw away EVERYTHING. All my hoards. Then I saw, my box of photographs (since primary school!).
It amazed me.
I stopped developing photos when the digital camera came along (or wait, 2 years later). With the digital camera, I continued to print every photo (this tendency remained; since the way it worked with the film camera was to submit to the mechanics of it and print every photo – and that led to me having photos of my school buildings.. and other random things!). Sadly, it was only for 2 more albums: chinese new year and a stay over with some friends. In current times, the post-click process involves uploading it on facebook OR just leave it in the hard disk and pray that the day your computer dies will never come (before you backed it up) – even that, I’m struggling with! Too many too many.
You know what they say, with every passing generation, whenever you gain something, you lose something. I think its true here. Isn’t it scary how we refer to a photograph as the digital copy of it? For me, I hardly print any! Only as presents and a lovely accompaniment to cards and letters. I think I lost the appreciation of printed pixels, I’ve lost an almost essential step of the photograph/y-experience: the printing/developing – the actual “physical” experience of holding the photograph. Something, I realised I probably want to do (need is not the right word), after seeing all those photographs from years ago (including my childhood ones that my parents printed).
I’m so thankful for every printed photograph.
Filed under: Beautiful seed, Thoughts on life
