Okay, so who is up for a little 2020 photo challenge? Ready? Read on….
I have a bit of a confession to make. I don’t have very many pictures of myself as a child. It’s not because my parents weren’t taking them…they certainly were. My dad was the dad with the camera at every event and family function. And he was great at getting them printed. We had printed flip book after flip book, neatly and candidly documenting the months of our family’s lives. Add to that the single images that my grandmother snapped on her Polaroid and immediately labeled, the school images that my parents dutifully ordered every year and the videos that my dad shot regularly, and we had a lifetime of memories to look back upon. And no wonder–my father had been a photographer for a number of years, and his mother was a historian. Recording our moments was in our blood.
And then the unthinkable happened. We had a fire.
I don’t have to describe how devastating the fire was. But the one thing I keep coming back to with so much regret are those photos. All lost. The iconic photograph of my father with his tricycle, the reels of slides that documented everything from the Grand Canyon to my grandmother swinging a baseball bat, my preschool photo of me in the big wicker seat and little pigtails….all gone.
Which gets me to my point. We live in a golden age of photography. It is easier now than ever to document our daily lives, and we certainly rise to the challenge. Every single day on Instagram alone, 95 million photos are uploaded to the site. Every. single. day. But while many of us are busy snapping the photos, we, perhaps more than ever, have a harder time managing our images. Whether it’s the loss of a memory card, a corrupted hard drive, a stolen phone, it’s every bit as easy to lose our images as it ever was, and perhaps even easier for them to get lost amongst the technology, never to be converted for future generations to see.
It is with this in mind that I am setting out in 2020 to make sure that my images are not only saved, but backed up, stored properly, shared and perhaps most importantly, transformed into physical prints that I can enjoy daily and hand down to my kids years from now. It’s a huge effort, which is why I will be breaking these tasks down into more manageable, bite-sized chunks over the next year.
And since every challenge is more enjoyable when shared with others, I am inviting you to join along with me over the course of the next 12 months. At the beginning of each month, I will put out a challenge that we can all take part in. Once you have completed each month’s challenge, simply post a picture of your completed task on that month’s post on facebook, and you will be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate to one of my favorite labs at the end of the year. The more tasks you complete, the more entries you will receive. But whether or not you win, you will be that much closer to having an organized, well-preserved system for your images, with the peace of mind that come the unthinkable, your memories will still be safe.
I hope you join me for this 2020 photo challenge! Stay tuned in the days ahead for more details to come.
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Christina Freeman is a photographer based in Anna, TX, serving McKinney, Plano, Frisco, Wylie, Lucas, Celina and other Collin County communities. She seeks to photograph the fun and messy moments that connect us all in our ordinary lives, from the very beginning to the very end. Get in touch if you have loved everything you have seen so far and would love to start a conversation today!