Digital photography

I'm sure no one will be surprised that digital photography has changed the way we take and keep pictures.  Our numbers certainly don't represent a "typical" family or average or anything other than our family.  And there are still pictures from whole sections of our lives which aren't digitized, inventoried, or backed up in any way.  So those numbers aren't included here.  But let's see what we do have:

Until 1963 there is a smattering of prints we've gotten mostly from our mothers but occasionally from other relatives.  These have been lovingly collected and for the most part carefully stored in scrapbooks.  By sharing many of the pictures with our kids, we've created a sort of backup system as well.  As I indicated before, I have no numbers from this period.

From 1963 to approximately 1980 we took slides, lots of slides with an increasing number of prints until we were almost exclusively getting prints from 1980 on.  Again, I don't have a number of prints but we have approximately 2,700 slides during this period, 540 from my mission alone.  Unless some are hiding, we have completed the scanning phase of digitizing all our slides.  They occupy 3.5 GB of storage.

From 1980 to 1996 we took almost exclusively prints.  Carolyn has scrap-booked at least 80% of the prints so they are available for family to look at. And maybe I'll get around to scanning them.

From 1996 on we used digital cameras when we could borrow one for special occasions like our trip to Japan in 2000.  And as soon as Carolyn and I got our own digital cameras we have exclusively taken digital pictures.  During this time we have taken and stored some 19,600 photos which reside in 21.0 GB of storage!

Of course we have noted a couple of major changes due to digital photos:
1.  We take dozens of pictures where before we might take 2 or 3.  After all, bits are almost free and they can be easily recycled.
2.  We never delete a picture unless it is so dark or out of focus that we can't recognize it a week later.

But the one thing that scares me is
3.  We can duplicate thousands of pictures in a fraction of a second and delete them just as fast.

Just before I wrote this blog entry I was cleaning up some of our files and inadvertently deleted 882 pictures.  Something "looked funny" so I stopped immediately and reviewed the recycle bin contents and was able to retrieve all the files.  All I have to say is BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.