Digital Pictures

Remember when you finished a roll of film and you rushed it to the store, you couldn’t wait to see the prints. Remember when you had only 24 exposures, so you had to pick you subjects carefully. Well, no more waiting and no more worrying about how many exposures you have. Welcome to the world of digital pictures. The sky’s the limit. Take all the pictures you want, dependent on the size of your card of course. And, well, no waiting to see the pictures, they are instantly available. I wonder if we are the better for it. What do we get for all this convenience. A hard drive full of pictures that we still have to go through; and worst, no excitement, no anticipation as you rip into the envelope to get a first look at your pictures.

I was in a truck stop with a small Burger King. We had to walk through a group of teenagers happily shooting pictures of each other with their digital camera. I wonder if they ever knew the discipline of having only 24 exposures, having to choose carefully what pictures to take; knowing that with each picture, that was one less exposure for something that might come up later. What you end up with is tons of pictures, that first must be downloaded and gone through; and well, that takes time. I took over six gigabytes of pictures in Iraq. They remain on my hard drive. O, I’ve looked at them, made a few slides shows out of them, but by and large they are just there. Maxine and I have taken two vacations since I’ve been back from Iraq, tons of pictures taken, none available to show unless we cranked up the computer. No albums to sit on the shelf, and go through when I get the notion, no prints to send my mother to put on the refrigerator. I want the excitement of waiting for my prints. I want a hard copy that I can hold in my hand, not a flickering image on a computer screen. They aren’t really pictures, just virtual pictures; really just digits, 0′s and 1′s. Readily available if your hard drive doesn’t crash or someone doesn’t discover a new and better format for pictures, rendering your pictures as yesterdays technology.