I Ought To Be In Pictures

This is a lesson in “Be careful what you wish for.” One of the greatest inventions of the 20th century is undoubtedly the digital camera. For one, the ability to see your picture immediately after you take it eliminates question of whether or not someone blinked. Secondly, the ability to store hundreds of pictures on the camera and then transfer them to an electronic storage device is better than the previous model I utilized which was a shoebox or drawer with hundreds of envelopes filled with random photos. It also makes us a little lazy. Knowing that those pictures are right where you can see them prolongs your ambition to go get them printed. “Well, maybe I’ll just buy a printer and photo paper.” Good Luck, printer ink will cost you a lot of money and so will the photo quality paper. With that in mind, I got my first digital camera for Christmas just before my daughter was born. The prospect of being able to capture hundreds of photos of her every waking moment filled me with a giddiness that could only be rivaled with the thought that I wouldn’t wonder which disposable camera has pictures of her on it and which one has Christmas from three years ago. I still have about five disposable cameras, sitting in a drawer, undeveloped. By now, the film is probably degraded beyond the point of even caring. My daughter arrived and I snapped pictures of everything. I took pictures of her sleeping, her crying, her feet, her nose, her flipping me off…yes, that is correct. After six months, I already had over 500 photos stored on my computer. Unfortunately, I had none in my wallet or in frames on the wall of my home. Suddenly, I felt like the worst parent in the world. People would ask me about my newborn and I had to describe her to them or at least show them a tiny, fuzzy image on my cell phone that was poorly lit. Soon, my wife began complaining that we needed to get actual pictures of her before she graduated college.

This past Christmas she started hinting around that she wanted a printer that could handle digital photos. I remembered the days of trying to get copies of my acting head shot printed out for auditions instead of paying $300 for them to be done by a professional outfit. It would have cost me just as much, if not more to buy the printer, ink cartridges, and paper. But now, they have these little kiosks in stores that will do the work for you. All you need to do is supply the storage device. CD’s, memory cards, and even USB flash drives are accepted in most places and you can manipulate the images right there in the store before buying them. I had a thought. If I could load a bunch of the pictures from my computer onto my 8GB flash drive, I could give my wife a better Christmas present, the actual pictures.

Of course, being the procrastinator I am, I could never find the opportunity to get to a store to do it. I went online and found that I could directly upload the photos from my computer and have them shipped to my house. Now, I realized that I could not get them there before Christmas Day, but the photo albums that my wife would open would be a preview of coming attractions. The quizzical look on her face prompted an explanation and I broke down, telling her that I didn’t buy her a printer, I bought her 228 actual pictures with duplicates. At $0.09 a picture, I couldn’t pass up the chance to have actual photos of my kid from her first six months of life. Eventually, I’ll get around to ordering more but for now, my wife will have her hands full.The Tuesday after Christmas saw the arrival of a pretty good sized box on my front porch. I rushed into the house and tore it open like it was my own Christmas gift and I was, again, seven years old. I began flipping through the pictures and began to wonder. There were no people in any of the shots and I’m not sure, but I didn’t remember going to Disney World in the last 16 months. Soon, I was staring at complete strangers. Who the hell are these people? Where’s my daughter sleeping, crying, and giving me the bird? Where are her feet? I became livid? I called the store and they were of no help. I even went online to the address of the actual service and opened up a live chat session that ended with, “We’ll get back to you.” I checked the box again and there was a packing slip with an email address on it. I figured what the heck, I should at least tell her that I got her photos. Maybe she got mine by accident. The response was positive. She’d ordered pictures at the end of November and had been trying, without luck, to find out what happened since the beginning of December. It just seemed odd that her order waiting almost a month to ship and then went to the wrong person while mine went to her. We both agreed to mail each other our orders with the understanding that our shipping costs would be reimbursed by the vendor. Soon, I had my baby on glossy 4x6’s.

Now, if you think that’s the end of the story, you’re wrong. Two days later, I received an email stating that I would be refunded. There was no mention of the shipping cost through UPS, they opted to refund the entire amount of my order. In essence, I got 456 photos for $8.00. Not too shabby. The next day, I found another box on my front porch. This one came from the photo service. It was another complete order of 456 pictures. I figured that maybe they felt bad and just sent another order and charged me the amount they credited giving me quadruples for the price of doubles. Still, I think I made out ahead of the game. Now, I could give pictures to my family as well as hers and still have pictures for ourselves.

Here it is a brand New Year and in the mailbox yesterday, I found another box. It looked strangely familiar. It was, again, from the photo service and inside was another 456 pictures. I now had 1368 pictures for the price of $8.00 in shipping. So, now when anyone asks if I have any pictures of my daughter I can give them their own personal copy. I can only imagine what the mailman will have for me today.

UPDATE:

As requested...

Digital Cameras for Dumbasses.

Sometimes, I can be a total idiot. I got into a debate at work once while discussing geography. The topic had to do with Dallas, the 80's television show, not the city in Texas. I was adamant that the shooting location for Southfork was in Nevada instead of Dallas, the city, not the 80's television show. Everyone looked at me as if I had just grown a third arm out of my neck. Of course, being the kind of person that has to settle the dispute by going to a higher power for clarification, I searched my old standby, Wikipedia, for the answer. I was shocked. Southfork Ranch was not in Nevada as I had been led to believe. Then my whole world suddenly crashed as if I was Keanu Reeves finding out I was in The Matrix. "Gambling in Casablanca? Soylent Green is people? Dil was a man? Whoa!"

Actually, I blame my parents for the geographical faux pas. Not directly of course, but still, it's because of them that I am unable to correctly use a digital camera without issues. You see, when I was a child, I liked looking watching home movies and seeing photos of my family from before I was born. Being the youngest of three there was a lot of history to catch up on and this was the best way to do it. Once I flipped through a pack of pictures that included shots of my Dad in the dessert outside of Vegas as well as shots of Southfork Ranch. Being that they were from the same roll and all together in the same envelope, I assumed that Southfork was outside of Las Vegas. I realized later, after being laughed at by my coworkers, what had happened. One year there was a Lions trip to Dallas, the next year was a State Farm trip to Vegas. It took two years to fill up one roll film. This is something that even plagues me now in the world of digital photography.

While growing up, I used to love taking pictures on vacation. I had my little Instamatic camera with the four side flash bulbs and barbell shaped film all ready for each trip to the beach or camping. Then, I would get the pictures developed and find that half were either too dark or of someone's ear. Then came my 35 millimeter and I was able to take more pictures with an instant built in flash. I snapped pictures of my bedroom and of my yard and got really handy with being able to capture the quintessence of man's struggle against nature and machine by taking a picture of myself running into a tree while cutting grass with the riding mower. Still, I fell victim to the same folly as my parents. I never could use an entire roll on one trip. I would get pictures back years later that encompassed a trip to Myrtle Beach book ended with Christmas pictures from before and after the vacation. To make matters worse, I can look at pictures taken from 3 different decades and not be able to tell you exactly which one came first because my parents have the same furniture in all three. They aren't exactly ahead of the curve when it comes to furniture buying. They've lived in two houses in my 33 years of life, the most recent one they've lived for over 20 years. The only change to the carpeting was in the basement was due to flooding from Hurricane Ivan in 2004, yet all the carpeting looks as if it was just laid yesterday. What can I say? I am my parents' son. Currently, I probably have 6 undeveloped disposable cameras, somewhere in my house, with pictures that range from 1999-2005 and one picture to take on each roll.

Cameras and photo taking have now become the bane of my existence since having a child. I recently got a Canon Powershot digital camera a couple Christmas' ago and I must say I am hooked. Now, I don't have to worry about fifteen wasted pictures of the inside of a lens cap when I get my prints back. I don't have the hang up of being able to capture the perfect moment only to be crushed by the fact that I forgot to advance the film. I also get the ability to instantly share my daughter's newest tricks with my friends and family without having to lug around a photo album. My only issue is that I am just as laxed now in downloading pictures as I was two years ago in developing film from a 35mm disposable. Since my daughter was born we've been snapping pictures almost everyday to capture each smile, creep, crawl, and clap. I've downloaded the pictures probably 3 times since last July. I have a 2GB memory card and only ran out of space this past week when I attempted to use the movie feature to capture her first attempt at pulling herself up into a standing position. I had to quickly scan and delete some bad pictures of us blinking.

Now in order to keep free space available and a constantly updated library I ordered an external hard drive to hold all of my pictures. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep ahead of the times unlike my parents. I'm currently in the process of trying to scan pages from their photo albums into my computer in hopes of preserving memories of our past forever. Because who wants to lose classic shots of us in Washington DC which, according to my wife was in Washington State until about 10 years ago. Apparently, someone in her family didn't finish a roll fast enough and the rest is photographic history.

Oh, and just for the record, South Fork is not located in Dallas. It's near Plano, in a community called Parker. So, pffft, I was half right.