Something has changed in the realm of photography which poses a threat to your children: a lost childhood. You’ve probably experienced this photography problem yourself, but it will truly be a saddening experience for future generations. Unless we can somehow stop it (I’ve got ideas!).
THE UNLIMITED CONUNDRUM
We have amazing cameras at affordable prices and photos created by phone cameras are only getting better and better.
Storage space is also cheap and only getting cheaper (ah the cloud!) so you can keep every single one of the photographs you’ve ever taken!
With the ability to photograph and store an unprecedented amount of family photos comes a serious problem. Losing your childhood in an enormous amount of files.
PAST PROBLEMS
But let’s go back in time first. This probably applies to you too.
My parents kept physical photo albums which I liked to leaf through. There were photos from birthdays, overseas family visits, holiday get-togethers, trips to the Toronto Zoo, and vacations abroad. That being said, there are still years of my childhood that weren’t documented in photos. Maybe it’s for the best!
Growing up, the problem we face is that we may be missing photos from our lives. Everyone wants their life to feel important and documenting it is one of those ways that helps.
CURRENT/FUTURE PROBLEMS
Kids growing up now will have a different issue. From the zillions of photos you’ve taken of them, how will they find meaningful photos of themselves?
When you think about or look back at your own albums I’m sure you can think of specific photos. Since there were fewer being taken, they just meant that much more. There’s value is less!
When children look back now and in the future they’ll wonder how they’ll siphon through the images to the important ones. We’re so busy and everything is so available that we aren’t deleting all the bad photos and creating curated albums. We’re just dumping it all into online galleries like Facebook albums. If you love sharing on Facebook go look at the quantity of images in your albums. Are all of them necessary?
FINDING CHILDHOOD
How do we combat this? There are a few ways I can think of:
- Take less photos and make sure they’re meaningful
- Delete bad photos (don’t do it in your camera though…that’s a common way memory cards fail)
- Limit the number of photos you take in a day
- Take photos mainly during special occasions
- Limit yourself to a specific number of storage space you use every year
So basically, the only thing we can do is be more mindful of what we’re photographing which I know can be difficult. Limiting yourself in something essentially limitless is tough at best, but I think we can all do it. I don’t have children yet, but I’ve tried to be more selective of the quality and quantity of photographs I take during vacations. I know you can do it too!
Do you see this as a problem too? Will your children be hard pressed to find photos that will succinctly show them how they grew up? Let us know in the comments below!
Jonathan How is the photographer behind Made by Ten and calls Milton his home. He specializes in creating beautiful, creative portraits of real women. He uses photography (and this blog) to help them build confidence and love for themselves and creates artistic images for their homes and offices. You can see him driving around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Ontario, Canada from portrait to fashion shoot and back again.