Photographs

I have millions (possibly even billions) of photographs.  My brother was a photographer although more of a videographer and I always carried a camera and have photos of every possible occasion. 

In 2000 I discovered a craft called Scrapbooking which made no sense to me initially as I didn't realise scrapbooking is what Americans call making a photo album.  I used to make scrapbooks as a child but they had 'scraps' in them as well as other ephemera like concert tickets or photos from magazines I particularly liked.   The reason I remember it was 2000 was because we went with our children for the first time to the USA on holiday, to Florida, and there they had huge craft stores where I was in heaven and came across all the stuff needed to create a scrapbook with not only favourite photos but with stickers and phrases all printed out ready to stick on not to mention wonderful background papers to stick them onto.  I believe the whole thing started with Mormons having to document their lives and they started adding photos and little receipts, relevent items and always a sentence or two about who was in the photo and the time, date, place etc for future generations.  From this a whole industry grew up with all sorts of stuff to decorate the pages of the albums which were usually 12" x 12".  I already had created many photo albums but they literally had the photos displayed in them with only very minute detail of the who, what, where and when so I gathered as many supplies as I could afford to carry back to the UK and started documenting our holidays properly.  I absolutely loved it and I'm very proud of the albums I made, not least the one I did of my MIL's life after I was given her box of photos when she died.  I've no idea why, but I fell away from scrapbooking.  I think it was around the time I got my first iphone.  I no longer had need to carry a camera with me, I had one on my phone!  So I stopped carrying it and therein started my problem.  I rarely go back and look at my phone photos.  I used to download them onto the computer then after an update along the way, it became much harder to download them so I more or less stopped doing it at all.   I have loads of photos on my phone that would be relevant to use on my blog but either I don't have the phone to hand when I'm doing it or I can't be bothered going through the hoops I need to get them off the phone, not to mention having to look through all the photos on the phone to pick the ones to download.  All the jokes and stuff people send me in Whatsapp save to my photos too so there's loads to sift through.  I keep thinking I should 'just do it', then I get distracted and don't.  I think its quite sad that for many years our life is documented in glorious technicolour and it seems to stop round about 2010. 

I wrote the above back in November 2020 and left it in drafts.  I came across it again today when I was piddling about on the computer doing nothing in particular!  Funnily enough since then I've discovered I can actually really easily transfer my photos from my phone to the computer.  My problems started because when I attach my phone to the computer it automatically asks me if I want to download my photos which I was saying yes to then it asked if I wanted to download all the ones I had since the last download which again I said yes to. Then it would say, sorry we can't do this and wouldn't download anything.  After much investigation online I discovered that the reason it was always failing to be able to do this is because some of the photos I have on my phone which look as though they are right here in front of me are apparently on my cloud!   Then I discovered I could just download the photos manually to my photo folder and it has opened up a new world to me to know that I can just tell the computer no thanks, don't download them automatically I'll do it myself thanks!  And like in the olden days when I put my memory card into the computer and told it where to put them, I now do the same.

 

I open my photos folder and tell the computer to put my photos where I want them to go.  Its been very liberating!  We do get caught up in the magic of computers and forget we can override them and tell them exactly what we want!!  Slowly but surely I'm getting my photos off my phone and onto my computer where I can actually use them for what I want.  Happy Days!