Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Dealing with Photos

I knew it was coming and I procrastinated:  my father's birthday is tomorrow and he adores and expects a photo calendar of our family.  What this means is that I upload all of the prior's years photos to Shutterfly (ideally I would do this monthly), and then I have the photos to select from to make a new calendar.  I've done this for several years now and it really is the perfect gift for loved ones who have everything.

Sunday afternoon, February 2012. 

But. 

I had to force myself through an entire year of photos.  While this could be inspiring, entertaining, and nostalgic, today it was sheer slog; some months had 300 photos before I went through with a razor-sharp click-and-delete.  The sun was shining, and I would have rather worked on the binding of Ben's quilt. 



No-bake Cheerios cookies - March 2012.  They were delicious.  I should make them again and blog about them this time.
 But.

I love my dad and he doesn't ask for much. . . except for the cherry pie and peach pie ("I want crumbs on top") that I baked tonight, too! 

I hope I'm more generous than I sound here.  I think the main thing I've thought all day was:  isn't modern life awful in the overabundance of photos from every angle of every activity? What's so terrible about having 20 photos total of an entire childhood?  They would be precious photos, indeed.

Never blogged about the failed marshmallow and coffee mousse.  May 2012

Ironically, this is also the day the children and I ran by the library where my book on digital photography had come in.  I'm not going to stop photographing things, but I'm rather sick of photos after today.  There's a lesson in something here somewhere and I'll just have to figure it out later.

6 comments:

sk said...

You are so exactly right.

jenny_o said...

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

Jobs like that drive me foolish!

You are a good daughter.

Zoë said...

This is EXACTLY how I feel about photos. About a year ago I decided I'm just not going to take as many pictures. And it's true...now the ones that I do take are that much more special!

Sew Blessed Maw [Judy] said...

Such a lovely idea for your dad..and adding his favorite pie..Excellent birthday indeed.

I so agree with you on the over abundance of photos..But, its hard to quit, with the cameras of today, the easy internet acess.. just too enticing.. I have 3 photo albums [no such thing as internet photos back then.Just plain ole film, you had to send off to develope yes..Im old.lol] anyway, I have- I know at least 20 albums of my grandkids. and sometimes, it is too overwhelming to look at them , especially , if your trying to find a particular photo..eeeh..

Polly said...

I was singing the exact same song in mid-December as I scrambled to finish photo books. I had to upload all those dadgum photos. I was Not Pleased but the end results were well worth the pain. I vowed to do better this year and upload monthly. Today is March 1 and guess how many photos I've uploaded?

Right. I need to get on that!

Anyhow, photo calendars/books are great gifts....so good for you for doing this 'labor of love.'

BLD in MT said...

There are pros and cons to everything, aren't there?!

That is a swell gift idea, by the way. I'm glad you persevered in the sorting!