Before digital cameras become common, physical prints of pictures were the way that people preserved their memories. Whether you had a huge camera with many different flash settings and lens adjustments, a simple camera for taking snapshots, or even if you used disposable cameras, you got developed printed pictures. Now, with all of the digital media options we have, we take much less care in preserving photos, if we even print them at all.
Before the digital age, getting your photos developed was like receiving a surprise gift. After a trip with friends or family, you would take your five or six rolls of film to the drugstore. You would often be too excited to wait overnight, so you would choose the one-hour photo service, and check your black sport watch repeatedly, waiting until the hour had passed.
Looking through the photos was a fun activity and a great way to relive the memories of the vacation. You might come across a funny shot of the elephant at the zoo, or a sill picture of your cousin with the men’s sport watch he bought at the gift shop before a mountain hike. Putting the photos in an album was also a fun thing to do.
Now, with digital cameras, we see a photo seconds after we have taken it. If we are not one-hundred percent satisfied with it, we can erase it and take it again. This gives us greater artistic control over the photos we end up with, but it takes away the element of surprise. No longer after a trip do we have the pleasure of coming across a photo we had forgotten was ever taken.
Because of digital photos, people often do not make photo albums anymore, not physical ones anyway. Instead they just transfer the photos onto a hardrive or cd, or put them in an album on a social networking site.
The advantage of digital photos is that they take up less space, and they are easier to share with people in other places. But you cannot have the same social experience around a computer screen as you can have sitting on a couch and passing around an album or a stack of photographs.
There are definitely ways that we can combine the advantages of digital photography with the good aspects of print photography. You can have your digital photos printed; you just have to use one of the machines that they have in drugstores with photo developing service. These machines allow you to crop, adjust and print digital photos. If you buy a few scrapbooking tools, you can create a beautiful print album from your digital photos.
Tags: album, digital, photography, photos, scrapbooking
