The boxes are stacked in the office waiting for my attention. They are filled with photo albums containing countless significant and not-so-significant moments from my life and that of my family.
Although it is not a particularly huge interest of mine, I am often the one behind the camera taking pictures of family gatherings, events and vacations. There is no real photographic evidence of me having ever attended any of these things, which is generally the fate of the one who by default ends up being the unofficial family photographer.
My very first camera was a Kodak Instamatic that appeared under a Christmas tree as a gift from my parents when I was 7. Included in the package was a roll of film that needed to be inserted and wound before you could take your first picture. There was also a limit to the pictures that could be taken depending upon the number of exposures on the film. That first roll allowed me to take 12 pictures andohI remember the thought I put into each frame.
Once the roll was complete there was the step of getting the pictures developed. We would mail the rolls to a certain company and then endure the waiting period anticipating their return and a chance to see the images. I can't recall how long it took for the pictures to arrive back in the mail but I remember the excitement of tearing open the envelope and rifling through the pictures to see what had been captured on film.
Today cameras and smartphones are capable of taking and storing 100s of pictures that can be viewed immediately. Then, with the click of a button you simply delete the ones you don't like and start over. Not so with film. Each shot was permanent and as a result I have a collection of terrible pictures.
I once had a brush with fame that I tried to capture on film. It was 1983 and we happened to be in the same lineup at a theme park as singer Michael Jackson. In my rush to get a picture I got a close-up of his right ear and some really good shots of his security guards. There is only one halfway decent shot as evidence that my path ever crossed with the popstar. Yet despite their lack of quality, all of the shots were carefully placed behind clear plastic sheets and kept in a photo album.
On a trip that took place shortly after the royal wedding of Charles and Diana my family visited a doll museum. Amongst the hundreds of dolls we saw my favourite was one of Princess Diana in her wedding dress. I took out my Kodak camera and took fouryes, fourprecious exposures of the doll resembling the princess. With breathless anticipation I opened the envelope when those pictures arrived and discovered that in three of them I had cut the doll's head off. The fourth was a brilliantly framed shot-bordering on absolute perfection-that was so overexposed her gown simply looked like a big whiteout obscuring the entire image. They, too, earned a page in my photo album.
It is estimated that in 2014 people worldwide might take as many as 880 billion pictures. Ease of technology has accounted for much of this volume but it makes me wonder about the staggering number of images we will take. Where will those pictures end up? Which ones will be deleted before anyone else can see-or pause long enough for a second glance? What will be considered unworthy?
