Every once in a while, I get subjected to various friends and relatives snapshots. At best, they’re mildly interesting. At worst, it takes forever to go through some huge picture album of vacation pictures, baby pictures, etc.
Almost as annoying is when we go on trips, we’re asked to cough up pictures afterwards. Generally, we don’t take pictures on trips. I used to, way back when, but never really enjoyed the hassle of taking them and get little pleasure looking at them later. Sure, every once in a while it’s nice to see a picture of that Hawaii trip, or the time we went skiing, or whatever, but I’m fine with one or two (or none, in many cases). Mr. Athena and I finally quit taking the cameras on vacation, and as a result most people now think we’re nuts.
It’s not that we don’t like pictures - Mr. Athena has a nice digital camera, and takes artistic pictures when the urge strikes him. But snapshots, taken quickly just to preserve some moment or other do very little for us. I don’t particularly enjoy looking at them (mine or anyone else’s) and I find that lugging a camera around all the time is annoying.
I’m not a snapshotty person, either. I have a box that holds pictures people have given me. The only time I ever look at it is when I open it up and find I can’t just toss in the next batch, so I resign myself to sorting through them and getting them all straightened out.
I have a nice digital camera that I use for arty pics, too, and I’m kind of hoping this makes me a little more interested in taking pictures of family and travel and stuff, so my sister doesn’t treat me like such a mutant. (“How come you never send me any piiiiiictures? I send you pictures all the tiiiiiiime.”)
When I went to Israel with a group, I was surprised by how differently different people approached taking pictures of things we saw on our journeys. I took pictures semi-lavishly, brought 8 or so rolls home, put them in a picture album and included captions (and have since re-put them in a picture album–this time scrapbooking). Some took more pictures than I did. Some wanted a group picture every place we went–I’ve got at least a half dozen, and we were only gone for 3 weeks, and it isn’t like these became my bestest buddies. At the other extreme, some took six pictures all trip–on the grounds that professional photos are better than snapshots, so one could buy postcard or better yet a book if one really wanted to see the scenery well.
While I’ve shown my Israel pics to a number of peope, I don’t think many of them have been unwilling-and I doubt I’ve taken any snapshots since Sept. It just seems kind of pointless when other people have better cameras, digital cameras, and silly to have six people taking pictures of one smiling toddler on different cameras.
Just to offer the other side, I love snapshots. I even like looking at the vacation pictures of people I don’t really know very well.
As much as I like looking at them now, I like looking at old snapshots even more. All the things that aren’t supposed to be the focus are now the main points of interest. The Grand Canyon looks pretty much the same as it did 50 years ago … it’s all the other little details that keep me enchanted – the hair, the clothing, the cars, (and going beyond the Grand Canyon) the wallpaper, the appliances, even the food on the table at birthday parties.
Huh. I like snapshots quite a bit - little frozen moments of spontaneity. Vacation snapshots are fun - people eating icecream, people staring up at big, impressive things, whatever. I go on vacation and come back to spend fifty bucks on developing. I wind up throwing most of them away, though; I wind up with a few good ones per roll and call it a good haul. The ones with life I keep.
Mugging for the vacation photo annoys me; people shouldn’t be reacting to the camera. The thing I really can’t stand is “family standing around in front of X” or “person standing in front of X”. Family portraits. They’re saccharine-sweet, whitewashed into mannequins with familiar faces. They mean nothing and nobody really cares. I haven’t taken one in years and I’ve refused to pose for them in longer. My family loves them and we fight regularly about it.
My family was all about snapshots. They have boxes and boxes of them, stored away in closets and nobody looks at them. There are pictures of every vacation, every holiday, every birthday, anniversary or cute thing that happened, for about 40 years. The downside of that is that a lot of the people in those photos are dead now, and we have no idea who some of them are, and have no one to ask.
Me, not so much. In my almost eight years of marriage, I’ll bet we haven’t accumulated more than three dozen photos. Sure, I took lots when she came to visit me in Canada, and when I came down here to see her. But since we had some snapshots taken at our wedding, I don’t think we’ve been in the same photo on any other occasion but Christmas with her family. I’m not sure that we’re both in a photo of our trip to Los Angeles. We have no portraits or other family pictures on our walls or anything. You can only take so many pictures of the cats before it gets boring. Any pictures I’ve taken with the digital camera that were worth saving are in a folder on my computer at home. There aren’t many…
I always have my camera with me at social events and trips. I love taking pictures with friends.
Recently, at a friend’s wedding, my pal L turned to her husband and said, “S, we forgot our camera at home! This is J’s wedding and we’re not going to have any pictures!” S turns to L and says, “Not to worry - **Luna ** will be there!”
I take them because I love capturing the memories. It doesn’t matter if it was a small barbecue or New Years Eve - years later we can look back and say, “what a great night that was!”
You know how, after you have put pictures in an album and looked at them once in a while over the years, the pictures themselves become the memory, or all you have of the memory? That creeps me out and makes me not want to keep them.
My parents go on a lot of camping trips and Pop documents them in excrutiating detail. I know it means a lot to him (his latest is to format each of the 100s of pictures painstakingly and save many CDsful) but I can’t think of how I will have to get rid of them when my parents are gone. Plus I know some of them are my mom being coerced into posing by landmarks, etc., and that bugs me.
I have a big poster-sized frame with many small pix in it that represent most of the important people I have known and want to remember. I am almost ready to toss the rest of the pix I have as clutter.
To me, snapshots are better when they’re older, so you can make fun of your parents for wearing orange polyester bellbottoms. Or so you can see how beautiful great-gramma looked on her wedding day.
The new itty bitty digi cameras that fit in the pocket easy, are light and can be whipped into action with one hand are the ones I like…
Take 10,000 and cull to 3 on your computer and print one great one if you must on a good printer.
An easy way to save good ideas on custom chopper ideas, unusual airplanes, neat wildlife pics…
But I do it for me only anymore.
I too , have boxes of pics that are never looked at, so I decided to do ‘slides’ 52 X 140 slot boxes later and I’ve never found anyone who could sit through more than one box.
Digi pics turned into screen saver shows, some to post for friends and family, a few to save an image of cars, or motor cycles I have had, but more and more, I like the candid, quick, glimpse into the surrounding life forms or as just a second chance for ‘me’ to relive or to see something I missed.
Digi’s are cheap, instant gratification and I can take pics until my finger hurts at no cost and cull later. ( 2 megapixil shots X 409 on my little 256 MEG memory card. With a 1 GIG card, it gets insane. Compared to regular film, the cost per picture is amortized in just a week of pictures to be almost free…