Watched my grandpa's old photo album turn into a digital dumpster fire

I found my grandpa's photo album from 1962. All those black and white pictures of him at the county fair in Ohio, still crisp. Then I scrolled through my phone's camera roll from last summer. Over 300 blurry selfies and food pics I'll never look at again. What happened to taking one good photo that you actually kept for 60 years? Does anyone else feel like we're trading memories for quantity now?

2 comments

2 Comments

aaron88422d ago

Got a similar wakeup call when my digital photo library hit 15,000 files and I couldn't find the one picture of my dog as a puppy. What worked for me was picking one day each month to go through that month's photos and delete the blurry ones, duplicates, and screenshots. Then I print out 12 photos a year (one per month) and put them in a real album with dates and a sentence about each. Seeing that thin album fill up over the years feels way more satisfying than having thousands of photos I never scroll past. Does that sound doable for you or too much work?

seanlee22d ago

Wait, aren't you the one who just said you couldn't find that puppy picture? That's exactly why your system works though. You're right that having too many photos makes it impossible to find anything good. I think the monthly purge is smart but the printing part is what really matters. Digital piles just keep growing, but a physical album forces you to pick your best shots. The one sentence per photo is a nice touch too, it makes each picture mean something instead of just being another file.