Surprises abound when you're a parent so it wasn't that weird to come across a collection of Archer's self-portraits when I was transferring photos from my camera to my iphoto (the following is a small selection of what I found):
Archer's pretty used to being in front of the camera being that I have thousands of photos of him. In fact I would doubt that a day has gone by without at least one photo snapped in his direction. I can't help it. Digital photography has made it impossible not to take photos of our kids. Whereas ten years ago, it was far too expensive to take a hundred photos in one sitting to get that "perfect shot" these days it's all free, baby. Which brings to me to another point: digital photography and whether or not anybody really prints all the photos they say they will. Do you? Because I know I don't
When Archer was born I bought ten rolls of TMAX and TriMax film black and white film so I could capture his first few months in dramatic black and white. To this day, those are the only photos I have of Archer in frames around the house. The rest of them are stored on my desktop and removable hard-drive and of course, flickr. Which I'm thrilled with, to be honest (so easy to share with out-of-town family and friends) except when I get in one of those "let's bring it back to the old-school" moods when I start getting pissed off at myself and launch into one of my many similarly themed multiple-personality arguments:
"Rebecca! You need to start taking photographs again with film! The black and white photo of Archer at six-months over the faux-fireplace in unacceptable! Update that shit, already!"
"I know, I know! It's just that, who has time to drop film off for development? And who can afford to print a thousand photos or deal with proof sheets when with a digital camera, POOF! It's there. Or DELETE! It isn't."
"Ugh! Your'e so annoying. Shut up, you lazy photographer person. Just shut up!"
"You shut up you annoying purist! Sheesh!"
"I know you are but what am I?"
"What? That doesn't even make sense!"
"Yeah! Because you don't get it! You never get it!"
Archer reaches for my camera to take a few more self-portraits for the road.
It's a constant battle, really. The part of me that wants to embrace art in the timeless sense old fashioned sense vs. the part of me who like many and most chooses to simplify her life with the -so accessible and easy-to-use technology. I'm a total juxtaposition and I know that. A computer-phobic blogger. A technophobe addicted to technology, crackberry in pocket even on walks around the block with the dogs, I find myself wondering what I ever did without TiVo. Or mp3s. Or, of course, a digital camera. So while the albums are empty, the flickr sets are overflowing and every day I embrace the ease of being able to snap a dozen photos of my son without thinking otherwise.
Being that holiday season is upon us (Happy Hanukkah to my chosen peeps!) I am once again embracing sites and services like Blurb.com (who I personally endorse because for one, the people behind blurb are AWESOME and I cannot say enough wonderful things about them and their services) who enable me to download and drag and easily create a photographic masterpiece for everyone in my family, a collection of moments and memories that are as instant as they are tangible. Pages of photos to turn and touch and show to friends without having to power-on your laptop.
I realize that there is a good chance that one day such books may become as much "art" as spending hours in the dark room, dipping and hanging and drying and so forth...
I still don't know how I feel about that, honestly. Time will tell, as they say.
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