Do Your Photos Really Exist?

 Donny at the photo tree, about 1973.

In the early 1970s we lived in a small house on the outskirts of Chattanooga. It had a large yard, however, and in the front yard was a beautiful poplar tree with four trunks. I called it my photo tree, and it was the backdrop for numerous photographs of my family and friends. Especially my family.

This is our second son, Donny. He was four or five at the time. Today, he's almost 55 and is a successful businessman who owns his own business in an extremely difficult and competitive field. (We don't call him Donny any more!) He's the father of Devlin, who is a student at the University of Tennessee, and Marlee, who just graduated from high school. She's the dancer whose pictures you've seen several times if you've been following this blog.

This picture is precious to me, as are all the photographs I've made of my family.My point is, this picture exists because I took the time and trouble to make it. I used a real camera, with black and white film, developed the film, and made the print in a darkroom. It wasn't convenient, but it was worth the effort.

Things are much different now. You can snap away with the little camera in your cell phone to your hearts content. But what will happen to those precious (and some not so precious, of course) photographs? You can save them to the cloud, of course, and you can download them to your computer. In either case, they have no real existence. They are nothing but collections of electrical impulses.

I'm not suggesting you get a film camera. But what about sending the best of those files to one of the many online services that will make prints from them? Prints that have actual existence. Prints you can put in an album for your family to cherish decades from now?

I know I keep beating this drum, but take my advice. Take a little time and trouble. Your kids, and maybe your grandkids, even great-grandkids will be glad you did.

(The camera, as best I remember, was a 35mm Pentax SV with a 50mm Takumar lens. The film was probably whatever I could buy cheap at the time.)

Louise continues to do well. We're working on finding a dental specialist who can readjust her bite.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.