Saturday, September 7, 2013

Why I love pictures

In the olden days I took pictures with a film camera, got my pictures developed, and scrapbooked or organized them.

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In the less old olden days I took pictures with a digital camera and burned discs every year to safeguard the pictures.

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With each camera upgrade came an increase in the number of CDs needed to hold the year’s pictures.  Finally it became ridiculous and I got an external hard drive instead, copying my pictures to it every couple of months.

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A couple of months ago my external drive failed.  Completely.  My 13 year’s worth of digital pictures were also stored on our family hard drive, but I didn’t feel comfortable knowing that more than half of my pictures weren’t stored in any second location.  Eventually I decided to subscribe to an online backup company.  As I read about their levels of service I realized that in order for all of my digital pictures to be backed up I would need to be able to back up my computer and the family’s external hard drive as well.

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What I didn’t realize initially was that without paying a lot more money, this service wasn’t going to automatically back up any videos for me.  I would have to go in to each picture folder, select the video clips, and choose the “back up now” option.  Now early on this wasn’t a problem—in the days where pictures were taken with cameras and videos were taken with something else.  But within a couple of years of getting a digital camera those lines had blurred and my files for each month began to have a video clip or two along with the pictures for the month. 

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(That happened in 2005, actually.)

I know that because this week I’ve started going through each individual folder of pictures looking for the videos to make sure they get backed up too.  My pictures are in folders by year, and then by month.  Sometimes they’re subdivided even further by event, depending on what was happening and how organized I was feeling.  Right now I’m working on the 2009 folder.

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I have looked through a LOT of picture folders this week.  More than 100.  And what I have noticed as I have looked and looked and looked, scanning for video files but noticing many of the picture files as well, is that my children were adorable.  And that we have done lots of fun things.  I have seen moments that my conscious brain forgot about long ago, and seeing them again has brought me such gratitude and happiness.  Gratitude for the wonderful life I have been able to live, and happiness as I’ve realized again how blessed I am and have been.

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I’m so grateful to have a camera—that records the moments that I know that eventually I will forget—to bring them back to me. 

And THAT is why I’m a picture person.

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