Crimes against Memories

It occurred to me today that we are in danger of having a whole generation of children that their only photos of their childhood are taken with phones and only uploaded to facebook (where they get compressed to death BTW!). A whole generation whose key life moments are only immortalized in grainy and blurry images. Birthday parties, first steps and other milestone moments might be immediately broadcast around the globe for mass consumption on facebook , but these same publically heralded moments are seemingly treated with as little importance as a quick orange tinted and blurry snap taken of your new shoes to show off on twitter.

I’m grateful so often that I have family albums full of childhood photos. Photos of birthday parties, days out and holidays. Photos that are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and not taken with expensive kit, but they are real and they are ‘safely’ stored in albums for me to look at whenever I choose. (I say ‘safely’ because I’m guilty of not having liberated them all from the sticky photo albums.)

Of course if you’re a scrapbooker I’m already preaching to the converted. We embrace recording our family’s history (and those everyday little moments) with an almost obsessive vigor but I’m sure we all know someone who is guilty of crimes against memories.

Don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying a camera phone doesn’t have a place. They are perfect for grabbing a once in a lifetime moment pic but for key moments take a second to get your camera (whether it’s a compact, or a slr) out and use it. Facebook won’t be here forever (I hope!) and with it will disappear the photos you’ve trusted them to keep safe.