8.29.2008

A Weekend of Memories








I am very excited to be heading off to my annual scrapbooking camp today. Three lovely days at Camp Elim on the lake near Forster NSW. It is the one time of the year when I can catch up on my albums. I don't scrapbook like you see in the shops with all the piles of ribbon and flowers and sticks and anything else that can be found, to me it is more like a photographic journal. The important thing for me is capturing the story that goes with the photos, like a diary of our daily pursuits with photographs.




I do this in 'hard copy' because although everything is in digital format, the format changes every couple of years. As an example of this I look at my childhood which is on 8mm silent film. The projector doesn't work properly anymore and yes I could probably get it fixed and convert the films to DVD etc etc, but the format will change again before too long. Just think - we started with the 5 1/4 inch floppy disk and then moved to the 3.5 inch disk and then the CD and then the DVD - what will be next ? Realistically I will have to convert my photos into a new format about every 5 years or so.

So for me, it's the old fashioned way. I take photos and I get them printed then I put them into museum quality albums and write with archival inks and preserve them. In the future there will be no outdated technology required to view my history, just the naked eye.



I have all my photos sorted and printed into groups ready to go for my intensive album making session. I have made notes to trigger my memory about what I want to record on the pages and it will be head down tail up working hard all weekend.



Making albums brings me so much joy. For each of my boys I have written an album 'to' them. It is a series of letters and photographs starting with when they were growing in my tummy. It captures how I felt about the day they were born, bringing them home for the first time, when they took their first steps. They love to look at them and read them. It is my view that it reinforces in them how they fit into the family and how precious and loved they are. In our busy lives do we ever take the time to write a note to someone and tell them how precious they are in our lives ?

This is my chance to record history for my family.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope you have a lovely time. I love having my photos printed out to look at anytime too.

Minni Mum said...

Hope you had fun! I agree with you too, I worry about all the family photos we have on the computer etc and what will become of them all. I have no artistic scrapbooking skills sadly, but I have been able to have some of our precious digital photos printed out onto archival quality paper and bound into books (it can be done by a few companies online) for special-event gifts. Expensive, but in my mind worth it, and the price of having them done is getting cheaper now. I figure I don't have to buy scrapbooking gear so it's probably working out not much more.

I also scanned a HUGE collection of my Mum's old black and white family ancestor photos, touched them up digitally (to remove spots and creases), and had them printed and bound into a book for Mum's 60th birthday a few years ago. She cried for ages before she could look at he book properly when we gave it to her, she was so touched.

Cheers, Julie

libby said...

I hope you had a great weekend. Look forward to hearing all about it and seeing some of your layouts.

Libby

pipnvik said...

I wish I had done an album like you have described for my 2 girls.

So many special moments and thoughts lost forever

Phil

Anonymous said...

Hi, we don't know each other, but I saw a link to your blog in an article about 'the new frugality' in the Sunday magazine in the Age...anyway, I just wanted to say that your idea of writing a journal to your children is a very original and lovely one :)

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