Digital display

The Cliffs of Etretat

Normandy, France, 1998

I spent the weekend going through five giant photo albums and individually scanning, uploading, captioning and organizing old photos. I got about 50 favorites done out of, I don't know, 1,200 total photos? Oy.

My mother asked me over the holidays when I was snapping some camera phone pics what I do with these photos in my phone and on my computer. And it occurred to me how much better electronic photos are. I have no need to print pictures anymore, unless I want one for framing or something. They're much easier to organize, and more fun to look at, on the computer, or even on the TV screen. They're three, four, five times as big, much sharper and more detailed, and I can organize them into slide shows with transitions and even music from iTunes. All in a tiny fraction of the time it takes to make a physical album.

Even before I had a digital camera, which I just got, I would order up CDs with electronic copies of my prints. But that just gets me through the last decade or so. There's a whole other quarter century's worth in albums and boxes and elsewhere. This is when a personal assistant would really come in handy ...