Weeding

[poliphilo]

I'm weeding family photographs. My parents were keen photographers, not very good at it- and seem to have kept everything. The secret is not to overthink- or overfeel- what you're doing. If a shot duplicates another better shot, is out of focus, shows people, animals, objects and scenery that will mean nothing to later generations or is simply yet another pic of relatives sitting in arm chairs at yet another unmemorable family gathering you tear it across (no going back) and drop it in the rubbish bag. You mustn't allow sentiment to creep in. If you do the exercise becomes depressing- and you should stop immediately- and wait till you can take it up again in a spirit of detachment.

I'm doing this so my kids or grandkids don't have to.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I think that digital has made people more willing to experiment but also more willing to ditch.

We kept some of his mums stuff and my little brother is doing the same edit as you for our family stuff and he'll email me anything he thinks I might find interesting which he knows will be the older stuff and he also knows there are (obviously) things to steer clear of!

[poliphilo]

So far I'm only dealing with prints- but there also colour slides and movies...

[mallorys_camera]

Hah! You could be talking to me. At last count, I had something like 26,000 digital photos on iCloud and five boxes of ancient snapshots in one of my closets.

Must. Get. Rid. 😀

[poliphilo]

But one has to be careful. There may be things worth keeping (see next post).

[qatsi]

It appears my parents come from opposite ends of the spectrum on this. So I fear I may be missing things, because my father may have just thrown everything out at some point in the past, and yet I have a couple of albums from my mother's side, and I think "Who are these people?"

[poliphilo]

I'm being ruthless with the more recent material but I'll go easy on the older stuff. A picture that's 100 years old has earned the right to be taken seriously.