Bewilderment in the Digital Age

It's a dilemma. My husband and I used to take photos with a real camera. You know - a film-ish kind of camera with a roll you put into the back and a button on the top that you push down. This was all fine because you knew pretty much where your photos were. They were inside your camera until you finished the roll and then took the roll out and drove it down to the photo store. Or something. It was all very straight forward.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/buttepubliclibrary/5434036595/

But it wasn't without its management problems. I kept losing rolls, or placing them somewhere I could never find anymore. Eventually we'd come upon them in drawers all throughout the house, sometimes under piles of clothing or underwear, in the coin box or piano bench. Everywhere there were rolls of undeveloped film, from a variety of years. It was sad, because I really wanted to see and to send the pictures to my mother, but could never seem to find them.

All of this changed rather abruptly when the first digital cameras came out. It took a while, but I learned how to deal with the new format. I (sort of) learned to take a picture, then pull it up, and determine whether it was good enough to keep. 

I tried to manage the number of pictures I took. But 
one day my digital camera made a sound and gave out a message that indicated there wasn't any space for more photos. I went to my husband.

"The camera won't let me take photos."

"Why not?" he said from behind the paper.

"It's full..", I ventured.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/iancvt55/7420977868/

Thus began the newest management problem, one that never seems to be solved: How to keep the SconeLady's photos from overwhelming her camera/phone/USB stick/chip/other storage device. It is all so very truly confusing.

Last year my husband advised me as I bought the newest iPhone, in a desperate quest for more space. He asked me which version I wanted - such as, how many gigabytes or megabytes or whatever it was. I didn't know so I just picked the biggest number. "I want the 64 gig one," I said.

"Good idea," he replied. "Even you will never use all that space."

That was a year ago. From time to time he would suggest deleting photos I did not like and would never use. "Ok, I will..",  I would promise. But it was just too hard to get to and the number of pictures blossomed. I had the blog, I had the grandkids, I had my 'sweet woodland town' to photograph - HOW COULD I POSSIBLY DELETE?

Which brings me to today. I awoke and went to take a photo of something, I think it was a sunrise. But suddenly the phone made a noise and a message that indicated there wasn't any space for more photos. I would have to delete some. Or download some. Or worse, import them into a Cloud. 

I approached my husband. 

"The iPhone won't let me take photos."

"Why not?" he said from behind his laptop.

"It's full.." I ventured.

It is probably best to end this one right here. Maybe analog wasn't so bad after all; maybe there's an old Kodak Brownie camera out there on Craig's List.



Sometimes progress just isn't what it's cracked up to be.


See you along the way!
the SconeLady


photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/buttepubliclibrary/5434036595/">Butte-Silver Bow Public Library</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>

photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/iancvt55/7420977868/">Ian Halsey</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>