It seems as though in these modern times, we all have so many pictures of our friends, families and of course ourselves, more than ever before.  Gone are the days where we had to purchase film for a camera, shoot in limited quantities due to costs and film limitations, then go get the film developed and order prints from the negatives AND keep those negatives protected for future use.  Yeah, that was a long sentence, I agree.  Today, in the digital world, there is no film cost.  We can fill up our camera phones and regular cameras with hundreds if not thousands of pictures and not have to take them to get developed.  Oh how easy it is to take a picture and text it to someone instantaneously for them to see, email it, post it on social media or just keep to to look at it.  Our computer hard drives are often full of pictures that cataloged our lives.  We are free from the chains of film negatives that once limited us.  Free, but at what cost?  The ease of the digital world has created another problem, tangible photographs that can be passed on from generation to generation.

As each hour and day, week, month passes, we get older.  This, of course, is a fact of living life.  When we are younger, we just want to be older and once we get there, we wish we were younger again.  As time passes and we age, our experiences become more relevant.  The word 'mortality' that seemed to be hidden from our vocabulary as a teenager and in our twenties starts to show up in our minds and on our lips as we get older.  This shift in the realization of mortality causes us to reflect on our lives.  We want to relive moments from our youth, and share them with family and friends.  Photographs help us to do just that.

Photographs are very powerful.  We've all heard phrases like "A picture paints a thousand words."  I believe that is very true.  The pictures that we take are chronicling  not just our lives, but the times that we lived in.  Photographs invoke emotion.  Ask any parent that looks back on a photograph of a grown up child, taken when they were very young.  The power and emotional connection of a photograph becomes even more evident when it is of someone that is no longer with us.  Those that have lost important people in their lives understand the emotional value of a photograph.  As convenient as the digital world is for photography, it can be devastating too.

Let's face it, camera phones, computers, iPads and digital cameras don't last forever.  They get dropped, lost, wet, damaged, or just stop working.  I am more than confident that most of us have access to thousands of photographs on our devices but few of us have access to a printed version of our memories.  How many of you reading this has an experience losing pictures on your digital device?  I can certainly say that I have.  In the day and age of society having the ability to take a large amount of photographs, we are not printing nearly as many as we should to hold on to and put away in a safe place.  As the years go by and we upgrade devices, replace broken computers and more, the chances of those photographs not only being there but not being corrupted are a little slim.  We need to start printing our photographs, cherishing them and keeping them for use in the future so that we have something tangible when we or our future generations are writing history.  It's time to stop procrastinating and start printing your pictures.  Don't take for granted that the photos on your electronic devices available today, will be there tomorrow........

JessicaB_01054