starting fresh

I've been thinking a lot lately about the dying act (at least for me) of actually printing photos and putting them in albums. Somewhere along the lines my normally strict photo album routine took a nose dive. It makes me sad to think that two or three years of vacations, birthdays, and special memories aren't recorded in a tangible book for my future children and grandchildren to look through. Or even for myself to look through. And the reason I haven't printed any photos for a couple years is partly because of this neurotic idea that I can't start a new photo album right now unless I get completely caught up on all the past memories. In other words, it's all too overwhelming to think about...so I don't. I imagine it's the feeling that extreme hoarders are overcome with when trying to start the process of cleaning out 10 years of pizza boxes from their basement. Or the reason it took me two hours to clean and organize my bathroom today. Avoidance and fear.

And I have another theory about why my photo albums stopped suddenly. Blogs and Facebook are to blame. Ever since I began posting my favorite photos online, I've lost the sense of urgency to have a real live picture to hold in my hands. It's as if once a picture has been put on the internet, it has been recorded in the universe and I can move on. And while sharing photos online is nice and instantaneous, it doesn't change the fact that sifting through a book of photographs, page by page is a beautiful thing. And something that future generations will enjoy. Imagine sitting in a nursing home on a laptop opening folders of photos. It's just not the same.

So I recently came to the conclusion that my best bet is to start fresh and forget about the lost years of printed photos. If I decide someday to go back and print them, so be it. But for now I am staring a new photo album this summer, no exceptions.

Comments

[Heather]

I have not been great about scrapbooking or doing albums,( I mean I have been married 15 years and I just last year got my wedding photos into a nice album.. :-D ) I started a basic album this year for current pictures but have not been great about keeping up with that.. So you inspired me, going to get started again on that.. Also learning about something that is more my style for chronicling memories, like an art journal type of album... So I am with you on that memory keeping! Thanks for the inspiration!

www.toliveinspired.wordpress.com

[Becks]

We use digital photo albums with fotobook now. It's so much easier. Just design digitally, upload it and it arrives at your door, what could be better!

[Meg]

I'm with you, Paige. I get overhwelmed by the sheer numbers of the images that I have, but you are right. Why sort through them now when memories are being made and captured every day! It would be so much easier to just start fresh. We're moving next month, and I think that would be the perfect time to throw together a small album :)

Thanks for the motivation!
xo

[Chrissy]

I love this post! When I was a child, it was such a delight to sit with my grandmother and build a sense of who I am based on her meticulous photo albums of our family. Even today when we visit, the albums inevitably come off the shelf and we laugh as we share memories and observe how much (or how little!) we've changed. It's tough work to do an album but to me the rewards far outweigh the time it takes to put one together.

[Lee]

I did just that a couple of years ago. Just started where I was rather than looking back. It was quite liberating! And, even though my kids can't look at their baby books they can still relive "the old days" because to them two or three years is a long time ago, they change so much so quickly! Enjoy your newfound energy!

[claudia]

I love this post. Thank you, at least I'm not the only one. A couple of months ago I organized the last 15 years of film prints into Creative Memories storage boxes, but there they sit, the negs are all a mess, I can't imagine taking the time to sort through them until I need one. I've only printed a few since entering the digital era about 5 yrs ago, I've made a couple of albums through shutterfly as gifts but not for myself. I'm so focused on capturing my boys as they grow (7&11) that I don't stop to think that nobody but me is enjoying the shots since they are all locked in my PC which just smoked last night. Thank goodness for external drives!! But what if I had lost them?

thanks for the inspiration, baby steps, move forward from where you are seems to make the most sense to me too!

[Katy]

I bought an album to put my Project 365 into - partly to keep me motivated, and mostly so that I can show someone who doesn't have a computer, like my grandmother, the work I've done over the year. Also, I prepaid for the 4x6 prints, so there is really no excuse to not get them printed.

[Puna]

You know what Paige? I agree. I have about 30 photo albums and then I started my blog and it was lost. You have just given me the impetus to begin again. I'm making a photo album for my daughter's riding coach so I guess I'll put one together for my family as well....

[wendy]

Your not alone...I have abandoned my photo albums as well. I like the digital photo album idea though. That's a good idea.

[anita johnson]

This is my first time commenting here. I was a strict photo album person too. I never showed people photos until they were in an album and the duplicates had been mailed to the appropriate people. But then I went digital, and saw the photos in their full glory on my monitor screen, I somewhat stopped printing photos. Blogging has changed my attitude too. But I miss my photo albums, grabbing one with friends and family and looking back on good times. Your post has made me determined to go back and fill in the last few years, even if in a more abbreviated way.
Good luck on your project!

[Crisse]

I remember going visiting at my grandmothers and how we would spend hours looking at all the albums she had. Even having seen then a dozen times we still loved looking at them over and over, sharing stories, asking questions and reliving memories. That remains one of the most special parts of our visits. It makes me sad to realize my children will miss out on that experience if I don't get back to putting albums together. I recently became motivated to get started again when my daughter asked if she could make a photo album. It's such fun to work together and poor over the photos trying to decide which should go in the album and in what order. The other thing I decided was to stop waiting until it could be perfect. As much as I enjoy looking at all the cute scrapbooked albums, for myself, I find that doing them that way is what slows me down! Too many choices and decisions and I become overwhelmed and end up putting it all aside. I decided to just take the simple route and just get into them in albums as is. They didn't need to be fancy or cute for us to be able to enjoy them as a group when I visited my grandmother... they just needed to be in the albums! :-)

[Diane]

Good for you!!! I am constantly urging my son and his family to get their photos printed and not leave them on the computer or on discs. I try it with clients too. So glad you are just going to do it!

[Sarah]

Hmmmmm ya know you are right!! I need to print off a few for my kiddos to keep! I have a dear friend who recently passed away of cancer. She created her blog when she was diagnosed as a way to journal to her children and grandchildren. Lots of photos ...lots of words. In the process she gained a huge following and became a beacon for so many others..myself included. I often wondered..did she back it up anywhere..or print them off? I agree a photo album for the family this summer is a great idea!! I think I will join you!! Truly, Sarah

[Ashley]

I felt exactly the same way! Do you know that you can upload your blog onto a website called blurb.com and it will make a digital photobook that they print and send to you.
I'm working on mine right now!
Good luck!

[GayleV]

I just blogged about this very subject recently. As much as I love digital photography, I also love having tangible prints. I have decided that I will print regularly and in smaller numbers so that it isn't overwhelming. I think monthly will work best for me. With so many photo printing options online (big shout out to mpix.com) it is easy to upload favorites from the month. It also helps that I usually blog my favorite images so I know just what ones to choose. I usually choose a few others that I love but didn't make the blog. That being said, I did just print about 500 photos in January of all my favorites from last year. It was a little overwhelming. I am thinking that I will also start making some blurb books of our favorite photos.

Here is a link to my post about this: http://www.momandcamera.com/2010/03/19/why-print-photographs/

[life in eden]

You are right it can be so overwhelming to plow through old prints, and if you just need that push to get back in the game then jump in from now forward. But if you can find a little pocket of time, it really sometimes can be so rewarding to go back and pull them out. I think what helps is a deadline. For the holidays I went through the last year (which was crazy -- premature birth of our twins, a move cross country and then back again) and made a book at snapfish. The quality wasn't incredible, but the results as a whole were. I was amazed at looking back on that crazy year. And I never would have done it without that deadline to make me decisive. I think that is what is so hard -- making the decision to include or exclude. We love what we shoot, but the tough part is really pulling out the very best.

Good luck to everyone! There is nothing like a real print in your hand or your wall!

[life in eden]

OOPS -- I meant to say "plow through old IMAGES" not prints! duh.

[Kathleen]

So true! I've been making books through snapfish for each year of my kiddo's life - cleverly titled "TWO" and "THREE" and the soon-to-be "FOUR.' I remember how much I adored looking through my mother's crinkly, yellow-covered photo albums for hours...I firmly believe that some of my childhood memories survive because of those photos that I could revisit whenever I wanted. So, hurray for those of us who will attempt to carry on the photo album tradition for ourselves and our children!

[Stephanie]

I haven't printed and put together a photo album since college but last fall my boyfriend and I took a two-week vacation to Italy. For Christmas, I ordered a digital photo album from Kokak with 100 of the best shots from the trip. It turned out beautifully and now we have an actual book to flip through and remember our trip (we just did that the other morning, actually). I'm thinking of making it a tradition - every year for Christmas, one of his gifts from me will be a photo album with all our fave moments of the previous year. It'll be nice to pass those on to our children one day.

[Stephanie]

sorry - *Kodak

[June]

If you blog pretty regularly, you can always create a Blurb book. Blurb imports your blog posts into your books which you can edit and print off.

Also, I am currently taking a class at BigPictureScrapbooking.com called Library of Memories and I am happy to say that my best photos are printed and are in albums. BPS founder Stacy Julian had us take out all our old prints, go through them, select the best photos, and put them in Pioneer Albums. Also, she had us sift through our digital photos and make seasonal highlight folders for the best ones using organizational software, which we then upload to our preferred printer. Those pictures also get placed in Pioneer Albums. It was a huge undertaking taking a whole month of sporadic sorting, but totally worth it.

[Happydog]

I'm all for tangible books. We’ve recently had to put my Dad in a secure facility for Alzheimer’s. He was an avid photographer all his life chronicling the family history through his pictures. It’s been really special to have old photo albums to take when we visit and he perks up while we reminisce and remember old times. It wouldn’t be the same on a laptop.....

[AnnGeeDee]

I am so lucky that my mother has a knack for scrapbooking and a knack for getting things done. She and I made a deal when my son was born that if I took the pictures, she'd do the scrapbook pages. So it ended up that I took photos every month for the first year od his life and my mother made an 8x8 spread for each one. The book turned out so great that we agreed to do the same thing when my daughter was born. I am thrilled that I have 2 beautiful books to document the times when I was too sleep deprived and overwhelmed to do them myself.

[Denise]

I started a book last summer including all the best pictures from the first year of me and my boyfriend dating. Then I got busy with work and school and never finished it. All the photos are printed and organized into their places, but not actually put together yet. I'm feeling overwhelmed because I never finished it and haven't even STARTED on our second year book, even though the beginning of year 3 is just around the corner. I'm hoping to have a book for every year we are together so we can look back and see where we came from. I guess I'm just a dork like that. =P I just wish I had more free time to get these done.

[carilyne]

My mother passed away 18 months ago. I inherited some of her pictures. Most have no date, no identification. Trying to piece it all back together has been a year long challenge and I've barely begun. It has caused me to be more diligent in creating digital scrapbooks. I use a site that you pay $100 a year, or $15 a month. It is a digital scrapbook site with all the fancy embellishments of regular scrapbooks, but also provides lifetime archiving of your pictures AND your projects so that if anything were to happen and you lost your scrapbooks you could get another copy made. The other digital scrapbook sites don't offer it.

[Shawna]

how timely! i'm in a time crunch right now - i'm making an 8x8 digital album for my daughter's first two years. her birthday is next month but the real push is a sale on albums that ends thurs :O) oh, that and a baby due soon. i want her to be able to touch photos and SEE that she was a baby, too, and i nursed her and carried her just the same. kids will sit and look at photos for hours on end.

we do a calendar every year, and that helps, but it's not a keepsake, really. i've finally learned my lesson through this project that if you just keep up with it - do one page a month, the end of the year is not so daunting. and words? bleh. they always sound cheesy. that's what story time is for. so these albums will just have the month and year and photos and lots and lots of love. that's how i've learned to manage.

i'm glad you're going to jump straight in and start now - going over the past is truly daunting and makes me just want to stop for all the effort. what a great idea to just pick up where you are.

[melissa]

My summer goal too!

[Chessa!]

I agree! I was so great with printing and albums during my pre-digital years. Now I have at least 4 big trips and no albums. The photos that I have ordered are sitting in boxes on my bookshelf next to my beautiful albums. I still have to order images from a two week trip to Italy last year - at least that's the idea before our daughter arrives in June! Once she's here I'm going to try to be better about it...

[Debbie Pearson]

If someone else has already said this, I apologize. Blurb will download your blog posts, pictures and all and put them in book format for you. It's a great way to still do what you love (taking pictures and blogging) and also capture a month or year or whatever time frame in a book. I love it because your text is already written in your blog, your photos are already with the text. Bam, you got a book! No I don't work for Blurb. I've just gone through the same cycle as you a few years ago :) Good luck and wishing you all the best!

[Trude]

Great idea! I typically only do prints for major events/trips, etc. Although I did get all my Project 365 photos printed and put them in a 4x6 album where I could write next to each day the notes and thoughts I had posted to Flickr. Really love how it turned out. :)

[Megan]

Oh, how I feel your pain! I *love* scrapbooking but unfortunately moving to a new home without a craft room to call my home and having three destructive cats has forced me to turn to making digital albums in lieu of the tangible ones I love so much. Granted, the digital scrapbook pages are beautiful but it's just not the same. And, like you, I have this feeling of dread that holds me back from moving forward because I'm missing out on so many behind. I have vowed, however, that once my husband and I relocate (he has a new job coming up) that we will have a sacred space for art projects and that I will get caught up and creating again :)