Memories live on, make good ones

by Peter Twitchell

I opened the folder to 1959 and looked at the pictures I took with my Kodak Instamatic camera back then. The photos were in perfect shape. I look at the pictures from 1909 – 1945 of family and am amazed how colorful and beautiful they are.

I didn’t know anything about digital photos until very recently when a professional photographer friend of mine told me he didn’t do anything digitally. I was surprised since I have never studied the modern technology.

He also told me that the reason he didn’t use a digital camera was because in time digital pictures fade and disappear unlike my pictures which I took with a regular camera using regular film.

I want each picture I take to be around for awhile because of my kids and grandkids. I preserve my memories on film, that my family can enjoy them too.

I was a little disappointed to hear that digital pictures corrupt and only are viewable for a short time 15 – 18 years at most, unless someone saves them onto something else, and this part I’ve never thought about or studied. I’m old school and like a film fed camera.

My cousin puts her favorite pictures onto canvas from a digital camera, and I’m pretty sure in my own mind that this is adequate preservation of treasured pictures.

I recently took a picture which was torn at the face of the individual which was the object of the picture and tried to have it digitally repaired where they took two pieces of the picture, copied them and digitally tried to recreate the photo, but failed. The individual in the picture looked like a total stranger, so I opted to have my friend do what he could to repair the torn picture and put another photo of the individual on the same picture so that we knew who the individual was in the original picture.

The picture I’m referring to was almost destroyed when my storage was vandalized and turned upside down by a neighborhood teenage boy. I venture to say that I hope that this boy gets some help to deal with some anger problems that he takes out on other’s property.

To me, he is more important that trying to restore an old torn picture. Lastly, I am proud of the work my friend and his partner are doing to restore my treasured picture. Memories live on, let’s make them good ones.