189,174 Digital pictures and counting

"Preserve your memories. Keep them well, what you forget, you can never retell." Louisa May Alcott

Sage words from the author of the lovely book, Little Women.

We bought a new PC after having our old one for over five years. It needed to be replaced because the storage on the hard drive was almost completely full. We were going to replace it with one of Donnie's old work computers but when Donnie went to Best Buy to purchase a new monitor, he saw that the prices of PC's were so reasonable that he decided to buy a brand new computer.

We had to transfer everything that we wanted to keep from the old PC to the new one. When it came time to transferring photo files, we realized that I had 189,174 pictures on the old PC from the year 2004 to now. I have no idea if that's above average or below but I'm guessing above average. Dividing 189,174 photos by 15 years equals 12600 per year which is over one thousand a month (averaged out).

Some people joke that they have about ten pictures from their childhood. I am one of those people; I can trace the desire to capture my kids' childhood via photos from the fact that I have so few photos of me from my childhood. It's not just the desire to see "me" that  makes me wish there were more photos of my childhood- it's the surroundings that I wish I had more photos of. One example- my siblings and I spent a lot of time in our barn. We made a playhouse out of one section of the barn that had three tiny rooms in it. We had a kitchen, a family room, and a bedroom. I can see it in my mind's eye- sort of. I forget so many of the details but remember the pride of setting up the rooms and of having such a cool, unique space. How I wish I had a picture or fifteen to remember that space. The barn is long gone and my memory of that fun space in the barn is on its way out, I'm afraid. What color was the plastic table in the kitchen? I think it had red in it. The seat cushion of the couch was green velour. The seat part of the couch was a bale of hay that we took from the hay loft in the barn. But what comprised that back part of it? I don't remember and there are no pictures of that green velour covered bale of hay to help me remember. The playhouse in the barn is just one of many places where I spent hours but have no photo documentation of.

So, I think the desire to take many pictures of the kids and their surroundings comes by naturally. I want them to have what I don't have now. In addition, I enjoy taking pictures and looking at them.  So it's a win- win or at least it will be one day ;).

Of the pictures that are on my computer, some of them are cell phone pictures. I periodically download pictures from my phone to my computer. Speaking of cell phones, Donnie and I are going to upgrade our phones soon. We are getting new phones because the batteries in our phones are atrocious.  I am looking forward to a 100% batter charge lasting longer than seven seconds when I use my phone to go online, of course, but I'm also looking forward to having a better quality cell phone camera.

Speaking of better quality, I am grateful that I was able to get a dSLR camera many years ago- almost exactly thirteen years ago. It was a Nikon d80 and it was love at first sight of the first photo that I took with it. I remember that first photo. It was of Alyssa in her high chair.  Several years ago, I gave that camera away and got a new Nikon, a Nikon d7000. That camera has served me well and I'm grateful for it and the assortment of lens I've collected over the years.

The one downside to digital photography for me is the ability to see the picture that I've taken, either on the camera's screen or a computer screen after I've downloaded it, renders printing pictures not a necessity so I only have a small fraction of the digital photos that I've taken printed. On the other hand, it would be space consuming to have 189,174 prints somewhere in the house so maybe it's not such a bad thing after all to not print every picture that I've taken. I printed digital photos for years so I have a decent collection of photo albums but I've been really bad about printing photos the past few years. I need to get more diligent in printing my favorite pictures. I've spent time making photo books. I enjoy making photo books but they are time consuming and I always, always, always, always have a typo or two (not shocking is it??) which drives me nuts after I get the physical book.

To close this out, I should mention that not nearly all of the 189,174 digital photos on our PC are of the children. I've photographed nature scenes from vacations and hikes. I've photographed probably close to a hundred soccer games, taking pictures of not just my child, but of teammates as well. My favorite subjects are my kids but they are definitely not the only subjects of pictures I've taken.

Just a few photos, mostly from days gone by:

This photo is not digital- this predates us having a digital camera. I have hundreds of photos (printed(!) or course, as that was the only way to view a picture that had been taken) taken before we got our first digital camera. This one is of Jacob and me. I am reminded of so many things when I see this- how simple and sweet life was with one baby, what an incredibly good baby Jacob was, and how happy I was to be his mother.

This is one of those rare photos of me from my childhood. I don't know why my older two brothers aren't in the photo (we likely only had three pairs of ice skates). I don't recall ice skating on our frozen creek. However, I do l have lots of memories of playing in the creek in warm weather so I know it was shallow where we were standing. So if the ice started to crack and give way, we would have been fine :).

I'm so glad that I took this picture of our barn (apparently on February 9, 1991). It's the only picture I know of that shows one side of our barn in its entirety. I really wish I had pictures of the other side (where the barn door was) and of course I wish I had pictures of the inside. I do know that our playhouse was located to the right of the open door that's visible in the picture. 

My new computer monitor and computer- because middle age requires a large monitor on which to view those photo files!