Back in the day, the cost of travel was never quite complete until you got home, took your vacation photos to the drugstore and waited to see if they turned out as well as your memory of the actual events. When it came time for pickup, the disappointments piled up. Eyes closed, blurry, too light, too dark, finger on the lens, pigeon flew across at the worse possible time - the photo disasters were ready to be revealed, in living color and in duplicate. Or sometimes even panorama.
I'd say we took the average amount of photos, and some turned out really well. Definitely photo album worthy if not frame worthy. For the first few years of our marriage, I tried to keep up with the albums. I'd sometimes have a couple of years of photos piling up, but then one hot summer day I'd crank up the AC and get the pictures in albums, all in perfect chronological order. No labels or dates, because just getting them in albums was reason to celebrate. It always felt so good, I'm amazed I never took a picture of those backed-hunched-over, legs-cramping, forgot-to-eat-all-day photo album filling sessions.
Then I stopped and the photos really started piling up. I would always put an album together after an International Convention in Europe, but the everyday photos stayed in their packages. I would separate the negatives and store them at my Mom's house, in case we ever had a fire and all our photos burned up and we decided to spend the money to reprint every last blurry one to once again not put in albums.
Then I discovered photo boxes! You know, those cute lightweight boxes that are great for stuffing in huge amounts of duplicate blurry pictures of pigeons with their eyes closed. It was a procrastinator's dream! I bought lots of them. I labeled the little tab in front PHOTOS or MEMORIES and stacked them up on shelves. And moved them from house to house. They were great boxes, truly adorable and did I mention stackable?
After getting our house in order in so many other areas, I was feeling the need to attack the photos. I'd have to be in the right mood. Not too sentimental, but not too brutal that I would throw out all the fat pictures lest I forget. Here was my process.
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| Find a nice open space to see what I was up against. Futon to the rescue! |
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| Open the scary end of my closet. Open it wide. |
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| Take out every album, every box and every container with photos in them. Scream. |
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| Give my shoes a place to look cute. Smile. |
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| Start by emptying each photo album. Toss all the "Why did we ever save this one?" photos. Don't let those blurry, squinting pigeons load on the guilt. Toss them and don't look back. |
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| Realize that keeping the negatives was really dumb. Throw them out. |
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| Take the empty albums to Goodwill. 17 pounds of photos lighter, not including the albums. Sigh. |
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| Pile is smaller. More work to do, but it's a huge dent. |
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| Stop sorting when I come across a very special photo. You know, one of the precious ones. Sigh. |
This one photo, this brief encounter in Germany in 1998 was a life changer. We had stayed behind at the International Convention in Nuremberg to sing with the Hungarians. We were some of the last to leave the stadium. Who do we pass by but this adorable Polish family. We took their photo and exchanged addresses.
We wrote them and sent them our duplicates. They wrote back and did the same. Then a few more letters. Then a few nights spent with them on our next trip to Germany. They came to visit us in California for two weeks. More trips here with just the girls. More trips to see them in Germany, a trip together to their home country of Poland. Our friends in Tahoe met them, fell in love with them just as we did. A trip out to New York when their daughter married an American. We met more of their friends, who then met our friends from Tahoe. They introduced their brother to our Tahoe friend. Another wedding! That is one powerful little photo.
Now the decision comes - what to do with all these loose photos? Now that we know how many we have, the sheer size of these loose photos, it's easier to be a little more ruthless each time through. I have an idea to make a few very select albums with the best of the best of the best. By category, not by chronology. I'm tossing some of the possible categories around.
- International Conventions
- The People We Love
- Dog Photos, Volumes I and II
- Camping With Candace
- When We Were Young
- When We Were Fat
- When We Thought We Had Lost Weight But Were Still Fat
- Blurry Pictures With Our Eyes Closed Because We Were Still Young But Not Yet Fat
- Dog Photos, Volume III
That ought to do it!
