Photographs

A Picture of Someone Taking a Picture of Someone

If you are like me you have or had a list of things you planned to do after retirement.  Maybe it was a list you made for yourself.  Or maybe it was a list your spouse made for you.  Or maybe it was a list of things you kept putting off with the excuse that you just did not have time before retirement.    I actually had two lists.  One list had what I thought would be big exciting trips I wanted to take or things I wanted to experience.  I called that my "bucket list."  The other list was that list of things that I wanted to get done, but just seemed like there was never enough time to do.  I didn't really have a name for that list.

I will have to say that I have made much better progress on the "bucket list" than I have on the other list.  Probably because the "bucket list" items seem like they would be more fun to actually do.

One of the things on that other list was to sort and organize all the photos, slides and movies I have taken over the past half century plus.  They have been just collecting and collecting and collecting and it seemed like a reasonable goal to make some order and sense of them.  I mean I have pictures taken on four continents of thousands of people, places and subjects that have been important at one time in my life or another so certainly they must need to be organized.

As I have begun this task several times over the past four years I have learned a few things that will have an effect on the way I proceed in the future.

Lesson 1:  It will probably take longer than my remaining lifetime to complete the project.  Because of this, I am not going to get in a hurry.  A project that is impossible to achieve in a remaining lifetime should not have a deadline.

Lesson 2:  The changes in technology over the past half a century make the task very difficult to do.  If you don't believe me try doing something with a Super 8 movie reel or a 110 size slide transparency (yes I have a lot of each of those).  Remarkably, even with all of the technological "advances" in photography, printed images on paper still seem to be the most permanent and usable images.  There is a corollary to this lesson -- Any advantages technological advances offer a project such as this are offset by the difficulties technological advances cause.

Lesson 3:  As I sort through the piles I am constantly drawn to the photographs that include people.  The pictures of scenery or other subjects are nice, but it is really the pictures that show the people that have a lasting appeal.  The people are really where the memories are.  I am going to enjoy the memories of the people I find in the pictures as I sort and organize.

Lesson 4:  I have way too many photos.  I believe many of them are quite good, but a huge number are certainly not.  As you can see by the photo at the beginning of this blog-post, I even have photos of people taking photos of other people.  I should have progressively fewer photographs as I sort and organize. And I will try to try to find some really good shots to illustrate these blog-posts as I go.

Lesson 5:  There are not enough tags and folder names to allow sorting and organizing a lifetime of memories.  Enough said!

As you probably suspect, I have made much better progress organizing these lessons learned than I have actually organizing my photographs.

*Oh, by the way, I just found my old Super 8 movie projector and my old Bell and Howell Slide Cube projector in my garage.  I wonder if I can still find bulbs to fit them.  Maybe so, maybe not.  Everything seems to be going to LEDs and CFLs these days.