The Importance of Having Photos to Pass to Your Children
“Time is a cruel thief” - Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
The rise of technology in our daily lives has been so wonderful for so many reasons …
but one thing that has slipped to the wayside is how we document and store our live’s most precious memories.
32,394 - The number of photos currently sitting on my iPhone.
3 - The number of photos I’ve actually printed off of my phone in 2019.
When I was 7 years old I received a simple shoe box, covered in gold fabric. It’s purpose was to collect all of the photographs and meaningful pieces of paper I had laying around my room. It took me years to fill up the box. After that box, I got another. They are filled to the top with family photos passed down to me from my father, silly polaroids I took with friends, ticket stubs from my first concert, and friendship bracelets from a time that seems so far away.
These boxes serve as a time capsule. Every few years I pull them out and relive moments that I didn’t even know I remembered.
When I had my daughter, the first thing I did was purchase her her own shoe box size box. I imagined filling it up with memories starting the day she was born so that I could one day pass it on to her and we could relive those moments together. The first item I put in her box was her hat from the hospital.
But months passed by, and her box remained unfilled. I had taken thousands of photos on my phone, but never took the time to print them. A year passed, and I got a new phone. After that the photos took too long to download from the ‘cloud’, so I just left them there.
Technology Changes
Those photos still lay in the ‘cloud’ today. I used to pay $2 a month to keep my photos stored in the cloud. Today I pay $10 a month. Tomorrow they could decide to charge me $20 or $40 a month. When your photos live only in the cloud, you are at the mercy of the ever changing tech industry.
Your cloud provider could go out of business - and many have.
They could decide to charge a rate that you no longer can afford
How will you pass on the information in your cloud to your children?
I used to store my photos on CDs. Now, my computer doesn’t even have a CD rom drive. In fact, my computer doesn’t even has a USB drive.
Technology Fails
Speaking of USBs… and hard drives… did you know those things aren’t made to last forever? They will eventually fail. Do you trust your USBs and hard drives to keep your family photos safe for the next 40 years? By that time, will the technology still be around for your kids to easily access those photos?
Having Family Photos Displayed in the Home builds Self Esteem in Children
When a child sees a family portrait with them included in the photograph they say to themselves: ‘These people have me as part of what they are, that’s why I belong here. This is where I come from.” - Judy Weiser
Photos are important. They have meaning. They should be held and felt and touched - and they should include you.
Remember the 30,000+ photos sitting on my phone right now? How many of those include me in them? Not many, because I’m the one always BEHIND the camera, instead of in front of it. Does this sound like you? When you look back at the photos from your childhood, you don’t think to yourself “Wow what a weird angle dad was standing in” or “Jeeze, mom could have sucked it in for that photo”. Nope. Because that’s not what matters. What matters is the way your parents looked at you, and you at them. The way they held your hand and loved you deeply.
Print the photos that matter
Today I challenge you to change your mindset on these three things:
The cloud should be a backup, not your main way of storage for photographs
You should be IN the photos, not just behind the camera taking them.
Your photos should be displayed, in your home for your children to see everyday
Start printing and setting aside photos for your children. Whether its an album you make once a year or a shoebox you gradually fill with photos - your children will CHERISH this gift for years to come
