The Portland Metro Photographic News

A commentary by Tom Hubbard

Mrs. Wade was not her usual outgoing self as she stepped up to the counter in my camera store.  She was a regular and a loyal customer.  I could count on Mrs. Wade to drop off film for processing every month.  She had retired from teaching several years before and was now living her dream - traveling America.  Mrs. Wade was passionate about capturing images of those places she had only experienced through the pages of Life and National Geographic magazines.  She was having the time of her life.

But there was not the usual film in her hands today.  She had come to ask a favor.

Mrs. Wade's cousin had died in an automobile accident two days ago.  The family had searched through all their photo albums, but could not find a single picture they could use at the closed-casket memorial service.  They had turned to Mrs. Wade for help.  She spent the entire evening searching through her picture albums.  The only pictures she could find of her cousin had been taken when he was in elementary school.  She had no pictures of her cousin as an adult - except for a few frames on a roll of Kodak 8mm movie film.

The favor she wanted was for my camera shop to enlarge this 8mm image to a 16" x 20" picture that could be used at the funeral.  I warned her the quality would be poor, at best.  But the need outweighed the quality concerns.  We made an internegative from the frame of 8mm film and produced a 16" x 20" color enlargement.  It came out as expected.  Grainy.  Soft.  Blurred.  With muted colors.  But it served its purpose.

As we were making the picture, I couldn't help but think, "why did this happen?"  A man who was loved by his family had virtually no photographic record of his life?  As it turns out, he was camera shy and preferred to be the one taking the pictures.

That was my first encounter with this situation.  But I have been faced with the same story numerous times over the past 40 years.  Each time, my heart goes out to the family, and I wonder, "why?"

The experience has influenced the way I approach my own family record-keeping.  I vowed that AT LEAST once each year, I would make the time to take a series of pictures of my close family members.  I would take the time to make these pictures my best, and family album worthy.  The negatives, and now digital files, are safely stored away as part of my family's collective memory.

As humans, we often believe we (and our families) are invincible, and there's always time to catch a few snapshots of the relatives.  Well, we aren't, and there isn't.  I am the fortunate father of several children.  As I reviewed the images I had taken of their lives, I realized each subsequent child had fewer pictures in my collection.  Shame on me.  I had become complacent as the designated family photographer.

With the advent of digital photography and our love for taking pictures now at an all time high, there is little excuse for dodging this family documentation responsibility.  A responsibility we automatically assume when we become, either intentionally or by default, the "family photographer".  Although pictures are becoming easier to take and less expensive to process, the 21st century family photo album seems to be morphing into digital photo frames and online photo sharing.  That's not a bad thing.  Photo frames are a constant "in-your-face" source of family memories, and online photo sharing provides immediate access to pictures for families who are spread around the world.  But it does open the possibility that many individual family pictures may get lost or "deleted" from our digital libraries.  We need to take steps to ensure these priceless images are safely organized and stored for the future generations, far away from the "delete" key.

Software manufacturers have come to our aid.  Programs like Adobe's Lightroom and Apple Computer's Aperture offer powerful picture organizing features which allow us to tag individual images to make them easy to organize, store and retrieve.  While backing up our family pictures to CDs and DVDs affords us the ability to preserve these images and incorporate them as the visual histories of our families. 

The advent of online photo album printing services like Blurb will undoubtedly allow many family photographers to create a new type of family album.  They will be stunning in appearance, but they will be different.  They will not be maintained and updated like the old-fashioned album, where adding new photos and new pages was a family event.

The digital family album is a good thing.  But, like the family albums of the film age, it must be maintained, updated and kept secure.  Thanks to digital photography and dozens of photo-organizing programs, there should be no need for any family to have to repeat Mrs. Wade's story.  The 21st century family photo album may have a digital face, but it's as important as ever.