I have four pictures of my grandfather. Four. That’s it. To be honest, he probably only allowed his photo to be taken five or six times throughout his life, so four isn’t bad. I have one image of him as a young man in his work clothes (shown here). Another of him with one of his prized horses. One of him and Grandma and their five kids at their 50th wedding anniversary. And one of him and Grandma taken at my aunt’s kitchen table just a few hours before they died in an auto accident. As you may imagine, I treasure those four photos.
My youngest daughter takes at least four pictures of herself every hour and posts them on various social media apps. I sometimes act like I am doing the same to annoy her. She doesn’t fall for it.
The whole selfie rage seemingly came out of nowhere. Who would have thought that taking pictures of yourself would be a thing? I remember a timer on a film camera I once had that could be set and would give 15 seconds to get ready before it snapped a shot. Of course, you couldn’t see the image until the prints were made. Even so, I thought that was high-tech.
I am not amused by selfies. I am amused by smellfies. Yes, smellfies. This was demonstrated to me by a young female employee of ours who took a sniff of her armpit to see if she needed a deodorant refresh. A smellfie. Now that’s funny.
Back to photos. Some of you may remember the Polaroid rage in the 1970s when photos could be viewed almost instantly. This seems archaic today, yet Polaroids have made a comeback in recent years. When my youngest daughter isn’t taking selfies, she actually uses Polaroids — sparingly.
When we used film cameras and had prints made, we valued those photos, often storing them in scrapbooks. Polaroid photos were kept in those as well. Then we saved digital photos sparingly on small storage cards, then larger storage devices, and now in the Cloud. Most of us feel that our images are safe in this mysterious storage place, even though we recognize that Big Tech is somehow tracking, sorting and selling the data from it in some way.
When our company websites went down a few years ago and the data was potentially lost, it made me think twice about relying on people I don’t know to be in charge of storing our valued files and images. Then the sites were restored, and I am back to having faith in the Cloud again. Although my grandfather didn’t seem to see much value in photos, I am guessing this kind of trust would have made him sweat. He might have even tried a smellfie.
Have a fantastic Friday, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital editions
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707