Memories - Photos are Forever

I know I titled this post "Memories," but it's nothing sappy like that, so quit making that gagging sound. Over winter break I was going through my old elementary school backpack. In it I found a stack of old photos (probably used for some class project) and a few random sketches I had done as a kid. I had been planning to scan old family albums for a while now, and looking at my old stuff and wanting to preserve them for eternity gave me the kick in the pants to do so.

To be honest I didn't get too far. I only scanned up to like 70 photos. The scanner I'm using takes a while to make high quality scans. Afterward I take them and crop each photo, and adjust the brightness/contrast and color levels in Photoshop, so the whole process is slow. Also, there are some streaks under the glass of the scanner that show up on some scans, so I'm debating whether to wait until I get a newer scanner to resume. Anyway I've gotten halfway through a smaller album, and it's been interesting to see my parents when they were younger.

This leads me to the main point of this post. We take a lot of pictures now. We take them in a digital format so they'll never degrade and can be easily reproduced in exact quality. Once we've bought a digital camera, taking pictures is essentially free. I'm a proponent of candid photos and for the past decade we have been easily able to take photos in abundance and without hesitation. Almost all the photos I had seen of my parents were staged, everyone looking proper and prim. However, the ones I find most interesting and entertaining to look at are the ones of my parents engaging in day to day activities or even when my dad was making a funny face at the camera while standing behind my grandparents.

Now, our kids will have that luxury. We can take thousands of photos on a single memory stick and we plaster our photos all over Flikr and Facebook. Even Fuzzyshot allows you to do photoblogging of the most banal of activities. No event is too small for a snap of the camera. Our kids will be able to look at these mountainous digital records and see us when we were their age - whether we looked particularly dashing one day, a complete ass on another, or just largely boring. But even photos of boring activities are interesting when they're not staged in my opinion. There will be the fair share of staged photos, but it's the candid ones that will say something to viewers.

I'm not trying to make some grandiose message here. This is just an observation. One day, your kids will have the opportunity to see you when you were young, and see you at your best (and worst), if you let them. So what does this mean? Maybe you should take even more photos, or maybe you should be careful of what you take and what you put online. Take care in storing your photos 'cause a hard drive crash may spell the end to your beloved memories. In any case, the next generation will have a more complete and interesting view of their parents' lives and I think that is a good thing.

Here are some scans of my awesome drawings at grade five:

When I was a kid, I thought Wolverine was da bomb. I mean, he had GIANT METAL CLAWS and was virtually unkillable! Who wouldn't want giant claws that would SNIKT! out of his hands and could slice through anything!!? A dumb kid, that's who.

In elementary school, my good friend Yusuke and I worked on our own little comic/manga for the creative writing portion of class. We were awesome little guys shaped like spheres with awesome powers and awesome caps with the first letter of our first names on them. Then Yusuke moved to Japan and I was sad. Very sad. YUSUKE, WHERE ARE YOU!??!

I had great interest in contemporary art at the age of ten. Andy Warhol was my hero and I was eventually able to replicate his silk screening process so that I could make cheap art for the masses. Actually, I probably had no idea who Andy Warhol was, nor did I drink any Campbell soup or ogle Marilyn Monroe.