So Many Photos

I am in the midst of being seriously distracted by the discovery of the astounding number of photos I recently removed from my iPhone and placed on an external hard drive. (You know…to free up space on my phone for more photos.)

I’ve been frustrated by the fact that I knew I had a ton of great photos I’ve taken over the years, both with my camera and my iPhone, but I wasn’t sure where I’d stored them. Well, at least I’ve found some of them. But I’m absolutely certain there are a lot more yet to be rediscovered.

Writing this blog has made me acutely aware of how much I have that I do not use.

Wow. Just writing that sentence whacked me upside the head with its ugly truth – and not just with respect to photos (although that certainly does apply).

I hate to admit just how many photos I discovered on this external hard drive. Something like – no lie – 9,000 photos and videos. How could that be possible? I think a big culprit is how I tend to take about 50,000 shots of the same subject. That’s a real and present danger with digital photography. The tendency to take a million shots of the same stupid thing over and over again in an effort to capture whatever it is ‘just right.’

I’ll bet if I patiently wade through the photos I just discovered, only about 1,000 are actually worthy of being kept at all. And of those, probably only 200 would be worthy of being printed.

And There Are More Where They Came From

Perhaps even worse is the fact that, for as many photos as I just discovered, I know there are exponentially more stashed on some other external hard drive (or two) somewhere else here in the house. For instance, I know my photos from my first trip to Siberia (Tuva) are somewhere. I need to find them.

The thing is, I’m not one to make people look at photos I’ve taken of my trips. Indeed, I tend to wave off requests to share for fear of making people’s eyes glaze over. As a result, I honestly don’t know if I’ve shared any of my photos from any of my trips: to Tuva, Peru, Ireland, the Netherlands…and elsewhere. And since I never bothered to show them to anyone, I’ve not taken the time to organize them.

Hmm.

The Pitfalls of Digital Photos

This is definitely yet another very strong negative about digital photos. The first is that tendency to take too many photos of the same thing. The second is that I don’t organize them. And the third is perhaps the saddest of all: I neither look at them myself nor share them with anyone else.

I have to wonder where this odd habit of being loathe to share my photos with others comes from. Part of me suspects it comes from the years I sat in the dark watching slides taken by my parents and their friends. ‘Looking at slides’ was an extremely common past-time when I was growing up. It was always a big production: setting up the screen, getting the projector out, loading the carousel on the body of the machine.

Let’s Gather Round the Projector and Screen

I can still hear the whir of the fan inside the projector and the smell of the air it expelled – there was a distinct aroma to the machine as it heated up and the light bulb used to project the images documenting our lives became so hot that your skin would blister if you accidentally got too close to it. I distinctly remember the dust motes dancing in the beam of light broadcasting our images across the room, onto the screen, bigger than life.

I’m transported to what feels distinctly like another life as I recall sitting on the floor, leaning against a couch or laying flat with pillows under my head, through endless hours of “whirr, cuh-chunk, click” as each slide dropped into place before that withering light bulb.

Even though I declined to chuck those Kodak carousels filled with family memories, they’ve simply moved from my parents’ attic into ours. I used to have a projector of my own for some of the seminars I gave about 30 years ago, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work anymore. I’m equally sure I could get them transferred to digital media…if it were worth it. But I can practically guarantee I probably remember only a fraction of the names of the people depicted – and would I look at any of them, ever? Doubt it.

I don’t want that to happen with my memories. It behooves me to both cull and organize the photos I’ve taken and at least gives some context in case anyone ever looks at them in the future.

If nothing else, I hope to use more of them in this blog. Although you guys are probably going to get really tired of all the clouds, sunsets, creeks, rivers, oceans, trees, flowers and every animal that’s ever crossed my path. But there’ll be a couple cool shaman-shots mixed in.

(T-1033)