Photos in a box... try to think outside of it... g'head, try.

It's sad to think that all of the pictures in my life could not even fill a single 128GB flash-drive averaging 4mp per photo. That being said I am happy, after seeing many movies portraying future events, that the USB ports appear to survive well into the next millennium.

Morning Alan.

Once I'm gone, I won't care when my funeral happens.  I'll be rejoicing in another world, with all the family members who have gone before me.

Good morning Alan May,

Your post reminded me of when my sister and brother came to help sort through things when we moved my mom. We had more fun even found money she hid in books (which she was always doing). Fortunately I have photos that are printed out and in photo alums that we love to go through and I'm always fining one to post that throws the kids off guard! I love that every year they make a photo album of their year with all things family..a great way to document all that goes on and there is usually so much it makes my head swim!

Just came back from vacation in the Western Mediterranean.  500+ digital photos, I've copied them from my phone to my laptop, but most will never see the light of day.  I may dump them into some Facebook albums so I can retrieve them from one computer to the next to the next over the years.  And since our furry critters are the only "kids" we have, they won't be sorting them one day :)  Bill

Good morning Alan. This is bittersweet and ironic. I hope you have some pictures for your children.

Alan- I love your post and of course your comments on the comments which are always funny. And yes, I remember going through boxes and boxes and more of photos from my mother's house. Albums take up a lot of room but there's something that is missed when you have to look at them via the iPhone or other devices. 

After Hurricane Irma, I swore I was going to digitize the photos that I have from the pre-digital days but that has been an extremely slow process. I did buy those books you are offered from Facebook that compiles your photos from the year in it. 

My cousins and I ate digitizing family photos that go back to the 19th century. We want the next generation to have them for their sense of history.

                                              Thank you Alan. 

So much to love about this post. 

My parents are still alive, but my cousins have gone through this with the same thing happening....hours looking through old photos and reliving the memories. I don't see that as wasted time at all....it's very much quality time!

It's so true about the difference between photos and digital photos.  I love looking through my photos and hope someone in the future enjoys them after I'm gone. More than likely most will end up in the trash.

IMO nothing compares to looking, holding and passing around photographs with your family.

Digitals are fleeting and get filed away or lost.

You raise many, many issues with this poignant post. I too have wondered about the loss of photo memories. Are our kids, and their kids, going to huddle around the computer together and remember? Don't think so. You have a way of making most everything humorous, but I know moving mom to a nursing home is an emotional step. My thoughts are with you, Alan. D 

Alan

It’s a great point! We have boxes of photos from when our kids were little, and so many more I have gotten from family members that I need to do something with. The thought of digitizing them all is staggering.

Jeff

We have stacks of albums and more in boxes - but none from the last 20 years or so. I do save them to an external hard drive, so hopefully at least one of my kids would know how to retrieve them.

Every now and then when one of the boys is here, we go through a few albums together - and we enjoy it.

I have my pictures as long as I have my phone. Somehow, I don't get around to printing them very often.

This is a good point. When cleaning up my parents home after they were gone, I found a lot of fun photos. Pictures my dad took when he was in the service in Germany. He was late teens/early 20s, with beer bottles around, a girlfriend or two, etc. I got such a kick out of those. And there were a lot of photos of my sisters and I when we were young; going on camping trips, vacations, etc with our family. I loved looking at those as well.

While I have some photo albums around with pictures for my kids to see, most of my photos are now digital, and they'd probably never even know where to look for them. That's kind of sad. 

This is why you should use an iPhone. Then all of your photos could automatically be stored in the Cloud and in PHOTOS, which automatically uploads from phone to desktop computer. That way even after you're gone, if a relative can turn on your computer, if it still works, LOL, they can see your photos.

Or just go through the best photos now, scan and send them. Never be a better time to do it. And . . . after your late afternoon funeral, I imagine attendees will still throw a handful of dirt into the grave or whatever and say, let's go hit Happy Hour.

Hi Alan, some years ago when we downsized and moved to an urban condo, my husband scanned all the photo albums and we now have them online. They are fun to look at, but we had better make them available to our children and grandchildren or they'll be lost forever.

Alan, I had no problem with my parents photo albums! I had wonderful parents, but various circumstances caused me not to have a very happy childhood.  Mykids wanted the pics, but if it were up to me they would all be landfill material!

Alan, I've had another kind of photo experience. At an auction house that I frequented, there were always family photos in frames, in albums,  or loose by the dozens. Found myself wondering, "Why doesn't anyone in the family want these Kodak moments?"   
Hope you found some pictures that you forgot completely about. Kodak is better than memories alone. 

Even photos in albums and frames can be lost via flood or fire. It's happened to me. My cousins and I now share cherished old photos on our family Facebook group.

I scan or save everything to the cloud. I keep saying I'll make photo CDs or flash drives for my grandkids, but who knows how long these technologies will be relevant. Remember floppy disks? What are you doing with those now? Coasters?