Old-Fashioned Photos

I love digital photo technology. The tiny cameras and almost unlimited photo storage space of today makes it possible for people to take photos anywhere and everywhere, and capture each and every memory.

But sometimes I think we take almost too many photos. Right now I have 10 photos of my sons eating birthday cake, and I have to keep all 10 because they look slightly different in each one, and each unique expression is too cute for me to delete. I also have another 10 photos of them eating ice cream on Christmas day, looking almost exactly the same as they did in those 10 birthday cake photos. And they will probably sit in my hard drive for eternity. Fifty years from now, my sons will only skim past those photos because they still have to get through the rest of the 10,000 photos on my hard drive.

That's one reason I love the old-fashioned, black-and-white photos. Each photo was truly a snapshot in time because there are so few of them. Cameras and film were so expensive, and the actual photoshoot was so time-consuming (everyone had to stand/sit perfectly still, the photographer had to get under his black cloth, wait for the flashbulb to charge, etc.. etc..) that each photo was a Really. Big. Deal. There were no second chances, no extra files or negatives. Copies get lost or burnt or faded, making those that remain more precious still.

With no photos to chronicle each and every detail of their houses, their events, their expressions, we can only imagine what the rest of their lives could have been like. But that's part of their appeal -- these old-fashioned photos have such an air of romance and mystery because so much is left to our own imaginations.

PhotoHunt: For more old-fashioned things, click here.