Sitting on the bed with the family around a spread of physical photo prints is such a wonderful feeling and fun opportunity to bond as a family. Holding a memory in print or running your finger over a captioned defining moment of your life gives me an amazing sense of satisfaction and is such a sensory treat.
When my kids were still young, I photographed and even recorded with a camcorder their every firsts like their first roll, first crawl, first tumble, their first step, their first holding of the bottle, their mottai( tonsure), first birthday etc...while the recordings went into a VHS antifungal casette( which eventually got corrupted )..the photos were clicked with an analog Yashica and so the film roll got processed, developed into physical prints. All these photos were organized into photo albums with captions ....that is till i got a digital camera.
With digital camera and later phones, so many pictures are clicked daily from a simple chore like eating to sleeping and all gets easily deleted or uploaded depending on how it is composed..Some stored pictures of my children have crashed with the hard disk of my old computer, some burnt in CD's have got corrupted , But thankfully what has endured all these years are my physical photo albums and i cherish and value them the most. They have so many incredible family memories and stories to tell.
I enjoy making the photo albums and captioning them, an art i remember learning it from my mama( maternal uncle). He had a point and shoot camera called Hot shot, he would click us in them and we cousins enjoyed being in his frame. We could'nt wait till the photo was processed and brought from the studio in a cover, then we would sit beside him and help caption the photo. Infact, I looked forward to this activity when i went to his home in chennai and brought out all the photo albums of his sister and brother from the wooden almirah. The sepia toned photos of my grand parents, the black and white photos of my parents, uncle, aunts were neatly captioned as " mapillai vekkapadrar" ( the groom is feeling shy) " mamiyaar muraikirar" ( the mil is staring) etc. We would giggle and laugh at the funny captions.
Photo albums occupy a place of pride in my home, in the shelf of the wall cabinet in our drawing room. Albums of wedding, birthdays, vacations and photos of other important events/ocassions like sports day, annual day have all been captured into camera moments and preserved in albums. I cherish and value them the most.
Flipping through the pages of old albums is one of our favorite family time activity and it is such a wonderful feeling. We pull out all those albums and scatter them on the beds and then each photo starts telling a story and then nostalgia unplugs when we relive the fun experiences of a trip, function or an important event. we giggle, we narrate, we talk about how things have changed and we never know when time bides by.
Do you have a cherished object? If yes, Would you care to tell or do you like me want to participate and tell here Cherished blogfest
When my kids were still young, I photographed and even recorded with a camcorder their every firsts like their first roll, first crawl, first tumble, their first step, their first holding of the bottle, their mottai( tonsure), first birthday etc...while the recordings went into a VHS antifungal casette( which eventually got corrupted )..the photos were clicked with an analog Yashica and so the film roll got processed, developed into physical prints. All these photos were organized into photo albums with captions ....that is till i got a digital camera.
With digital camera and later phones, so many pictures are clicked daily from a simple chore like eating to sleeping and all gets easily deleted or uploaded depending on how it is composed..Some stored pictures of my children have crashed with the hard disk of my old computer, some burnt in CD's have got corrupted , But thankfully what has endured all these years are my physical photo albums and i cherish and value them the most. They have so many incredible family memories and stories to tell.
I enjoy making the photo albums and captioning them, an art i remember learning it from my mama( maternal uncle). He had a point and shoot camera called Hot shot, he would click us in them and we cousins enjoyed being in his frame. We could'nt wait till the photo was processed and brought from the studio in a cover, then we would sit beside him and help caption the photo. Infact, I looked forward to this activity when i went to his home in chennai and brought out all the photo albums of his sister and brother from the wooden almirah. The sepia toned photos of my grand parents, the black and white photos of my parents, uncle, aunts were neatly captioned as " mapillai vekkapadrar" ( the groom is feeling shy) " mamiyaar muraikirar" ( the mil is staring) etc. We would giggle and laugh at the funny captions.
Photo albums occupy a place of pride in my home, in the shelf of the wall cabinet in our drawing room. Albums of wedding, birthdays, vacations and photos of other important events/ocassions like sports day, annual day have all been captured into camera moments and preserved in albums. I cherish and value them the most.
Flipping through the pages of old albums is one of our favorite family time activity and it is such a wonderful feeling. We pull out all those albums and scatter them on the beds and then each photo starts telling a story and then nostalgia unplugs when we relive the fun experiences of a trip, function or an important event. we giggle, we narrate, we talk about how things have changed and we never know when time bides by.
Do you have a cherished object? If yes, Would you care to tell or do you like me want to participate and tell here Cherished blogfest
Asha, this is a lovely post. I agree that holding an actual photo in your hands is very special, something you can't get with a digital photo on the computer. I'm glad you have so many cherished memories of your family in print and that you gather to share them on occasion. What happy times those must be!
ReplyDeleteThanks for participating in the Cherished Blogfest, I hope you'll do this again next year.
Mary J
CBF Cohost
Thank you Mary for cohosting such a beautiful platform for us to share our thoughts and glad you feel the same about physical albums.
Deletewe routinely flip through some of our old photo albums. You are spot on with your description of the way they make you feel. We have actually started making small albums of digital photos (we have printed) to give each other as gifts.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this with us during the blogfest.
Dan - cohost #cbf16
Dan! happy to note you make small albums of digital printed photos. I do this too. and Thank you for cohosting and giving us a platform to share and thanks for concurring with my thoughts.
DeleteWe also look at our old photos and talk about those nostalgic days. I do that especially now.
ReplyDeleteGlad you do this too, SG...yes, it takes us back to our good old days. Thank you.
DeleteAnybody below 20 will read your post , shake their heads indulgently, and murmur - Oh those romantics !!!
ReplyDeleteNo chance of this surviving for very long. Especially when it comes to photography, digital it is. The days of the photo album are long gone.
But yes, "mamiyaar muraikkiral" is priceless :)
Agree there are many 'palm on the forehand' moments for these under 20's when old stories are narrated, but in this case the under 20's in my home and around me enjoy this, simply because they are a part of their picture and they have their stories. Many of them even have a photo challenge on social media to share their childhood pics. Thanks Ramesh...digital is in and going forth it will be...no looking back on this. Even i find digital convenient.
Delete'Palm on the forehead'
DeletePhoto albums, both old and new, are the best. I like the convenience of digital, but there's no comparison. Good post!
ReplyDelete@the night gallery - so true...digital is convenient but there's no comparison. Thank you :)
DeletePhotos are life's events relived time and time again.
ReplyDeleteYes Moye, agree with you totally. Thank you!
DeletePhysical photo albums should be cherished. Especially since digital ones can so easily be lost - mine recently got fried during an electrical surge and I'm searching everywhere for copies of those photos. Some are lost forever. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteoh... so unfortunate that you lost your digital photos. Yes, unless we have a back-up, it is difficult to retrieve them. whereas in analog, we can make copies out of the negative. This is one advantage. Thanks for your thoughts.
DeleteI LOVE photo albums. In fact, I have a collection of albums as huge as yours too. Browsing through albums is not same as going through a million pics on your laptop or phone. There's something magical about leafing through the pages of the albums and going back in time and reliving the memories. Though, I save pics on laptop and hard drive later, I do print a few pics every now and then and add them in the albums. And like you, it's our fav family activity too :) Good to see you participating in this blog fest, Asha :)
ReplyDeleteSo true...your thoughts Shilpa and glad you make prints out of the digital ones. Even i have started making after i lost a VHS casette and when my hard disk crashed. You were the reason i participated in this ...thank you, Shilpa!
DeleteYou have truly made your albums not precious mementos, but works or art. Lovely to read about.
ReplyDeleteThanks much Simon...you are kind!
Delete