Issue #31: A Box of Photographs
What exactly should someone do with the thousands of photos on their phones?
I have 38,715 photos on my phone (thanks to the $9.99 I pay for extra storage each month.) That might seem ridiculous, but it’s every digital photo I have saved. Each week, I go through a section of life and edit out photos that are duplicates, worthless to my memories, and anything else that just feels wasteful at this point. And I’m ruthless about my edits.
Part of the problem is that I save pictures for potential future articles, including the thousands that were taken during our year of travel. But what I’ve learned is that having fewer pictures is actually better for my memories. You want a photo to bring you back to a certain place or time. If you have hundreds of photos from one day, you’ll probably never look at them.
I know I’m not alone regarding the quantity of photos. What I’m interested in is how children growing up now will look at photos of their childhood. I have a box of photographs from my parents’ house, and I treasure those photos. Think about how much went into each photo. You had to pose (or be caught doing something adorable), and once the roll of film was complete (likely over a few weeks’ time unless you’re on vacation), it would be taken in for development. When one-hour photos came to be, I’m sure there was some excitement about the seemingly instant gratification.
Yes, I’m aware that this photo now lives on my computer as well as my special shoebox, so I’m instantly deleting it once this is sent.
Is There a Right Number of Memories to Keep?
The Atlantic just posted a piece called Can We Keep Time? It’s really a transcript of their podcast and covers the idea of capturing memories, whether it’s in photos, diaries, or social media. Asking the questions about the best ways to capture time in a souvenir got me thinking about how I take and keep photos and journals. I kept a few quotes from this piece to dive into it a bit deeper.
Technology has obviously made all of this easier. But it’s the argument of quality vs. quantity. With disposable cameras that were a big part of my middle school existence, you only had 24 or 36 shots. You made sure everyone was looking, and you set up a shot. That might have been annoying at the time to get everyone to look at the same time, but you weren’t being asked to pose for selfies and different variations of group shots all night long. People didn’t have their phones in their hands all the time to capture every candid moment.
Quality doesn’t mean that it has to be a professional-grade shot. When you’re capturing a memory, it should be something that transports you back to a specific moment whenever possible.
It's not about hoarding every moment as much as being able to value the experiences you've had. Because if you have one experience that is valuable that you could draw upon later from the past week, that's a whole lot better than mindlessly documenting everything you've ever done for the last week, right? And that's going to be more personally meaningful to you, I think, in terms of anchoring you in where you're going in your journey in life. Keeping all of it will erode those memories more than it will amplify them.
One way that I have always captured vacations is by writing down what I remember seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting, and hearing in the places that we visited. Instead of trying to journal about each moment, I allow myself just to remember what it was like to stand in that foreign country or new destination.
This next quote made me think of how I journal and write about things and wonder how to do that more with photos.
If you want to have something, though, that’s memorable and distinctive, you have to do the opposite. You have to ask yourself: What’s different about this experience that I can hold on to later?
The conversation talks about hoarding memories. If you take 100 photos on one trip and you never look at them again, you probably spend too much time with your camera. If every detail is shared on Instagram, are you spending any time looking with just your eyes?
Maybe you skip the selfies in front of landmarks (although that’s never really been my style) and instead, take pictures of the meal that you could never replicate at home or the moment when everyone shares a special toast or your puppy is playing at a new park. Find what’s different and snap a photo of that.
The important thing to remember is that you must live in your life instead of just recording it.
All that said, something must be said about capturing one photo while having a special night. Pretend you have a disposable camera and can snap just one shot. Because when you lose people in this world, you’ll want photos to look at to remember the details on their faces. There’s no way around that for me.
Here is a link to the podcast and transcript.
Apps and Hacks I Use for Photos
So, how do I really manage the thousands of photos in my albums? I don’t, but I’m working on it and have a few tricks that have helped me start this journey of being more aware of whether or not I’m hoarding memories.
1. Take advantage of all the iPhone features.
I'm sorry for those of you who are Android users (but I’m sure you have cool features, too.) The iPhone has made some serious updates recently. Photos are easily searchable now and automatically recognize faces. I can search for my favorite photos of a friend on their birthday or search for a specific place. Sometimes, the searches are weird - I searched “dog” the other day and was intrigued by the “hot dog restaurant” photos on my phone. Weirdly, it knew about Crif Dog in NYC, so I was impressed.
2. Get a monthly delivery of prints from Mootsch Photos
We have received monthly delivery from Mootsch for the last few months. I wish it were a little cheaper, but the photos are so good quality, and I’m reminded by email that it’s time to select which ones I want. Printing off 10 photos a month makes us take a look at what we’ve taken and pick the ones that make us smile. There’s just something different about holding the actual photo in my hand.
We also try to send friends prints after fun group vacations or events. It’s such an inexpensive little gift to thank people for coming.
3. Delete duplicates on the Alpaca App
I have a habit of taking seven of the same pictures to make sure I have at least one where everyone is smiling and looks good. But then, I never go back and clear out all the duplicates. This app has been a good way to keep entertained while sitting in line. It presents you with a selection of very similar photos and allows you to choose which to keep and which to eliminate. It deletes photos for you that you no longer want. Once you’ve worked on a set of photos, you won’t see them in the app again.
4. Have fun with the Instax
We purchased an Instax camera a few years ago, and it’s still working great. I throw it in my purse on random outings, and it’s always fun to have a collection of photos printed out instantly. This is the one we have that works great. We added this frame to the house to display random favorites.
PureWow featured this article recently about how millennial moms deal with photos. There are a few alternatives to Mootsch that I might check out.
This Substack covered this topic by showing a photo of how many people were on their phones on New Year’s Eve.
As someone who uses cloud services, this is a fascinating look at what they do with your data.
I’m currently indulging in this activity while writing this. And I’m not ashamed of it.
Marketing professionals are on board with Instagram carousels, and so am I.
And since I started this, I’ve added 4 more photos of my dog to the camera roll, so clearly I still have a lot of work to do. I’m curious how you manage your photos and if you have any secrets to share in the comments. Please let me know if you have any hot dog restaurants on your phone because it cannot just be me.
Also, I’ll be back a second time this week with my February favorites.
Cheers!
Steph