Got a Photograph, Picture Of

I've had photographs and photography on the brain lately.

Earlier this week I found myself going through a bunch of digital photographs, for a couple of reasons. For one, I was looking to print some taken at a couple of recent events for an album that Brandi and I started a while ago. Those were pretty easy to find. I was also searching for some amusing shots to add to my MySpace page. That search was a little more extensive because I wasn't looking for anything in particular. It took more time than it probably should have, but I was really getting a kick out of going through all those photos, seeing plenty that I had totally forgotten about.

As I searched, though, and got a clearer idea of what kind of pictures I was looking for, I started remembering specific photographs that I wanted. Unfortunately, most of them aren't in digital form, they're actual hard-copy snapshots which, in addition, are located at my parents' house about 120 miles away. Of course, even if I had been there, there's no guarantee I would have been able to easily find the shots I was looking for. My parents have, I think, two dresser drawers stuffed full of photographs with no organization whatsoever. There are no albums or anything like that. Hell, there aren't even stacks--they're just tossed in there every which way.

This led me to a thought. I seem to remember my mom saying something recently about those drawers full of photographs, and the possibility of applying some sort of organization to them. I'm sure that's pretty low on the priority list, though, so I was thinking about offering to bring all those photographs home with me sometime and organizing them myself. I'd like to categorize them somehow, separate the duplicates (and oh, there are duplicates), put the good ones into albums, and, if feasible, convert at least some of them into digital files. How many I have converted will depend on cost, as doing it myself would be prohibitively time consuming due to the slowness of my scanner. I'm thinking the project could be my gift to my parents upon my upcoming wedding. It wouldn't be ready by then, but I could work on it and have it finished this summer. Having them digitized, of course, would have the added benefit of letting me have a copy of them as well. As could anyone else who wanted them, of course.

For some reason, I've found myself growing more and more fascinated with photographs and photography lately. I'm not sure when or why that happened, other than the advent of digital photography. All I know is that when we went to meet with our wedding photographer for the first time, we were at his house for about four hours and I was really interested in looking at his photos and hearing him talk about them. It's kind of funny, actually, because my oldest brother is a photographer and I never really thought much about it. Now I think it's something I could really get into. I'd really like to take a class or two and learn more about it sometime in the not-too-distant future.