17,766. That is how many photos I have in digital format on my computer. The photo archive spans just under 10 years, and contains photos taken by not only me, but by my son, daughter and wife.
There are photos of great family vacations, of holidays, stop motion experiments by my son, backyard BBQs and pool parties. A fairly well rounded collection of images.
Mixed in with the good, necessary fun or important pictures, is a pretty fair amount of digital flotsam and jetsam. You know the type ..the somewhat out of focus, or badly lit shot, the ones with the heads of the subjects cut off or 25 'auto-winder' shots, all nearly identical. the kind of shots that, in this digital age, are nothing more than hard drive space wasters. I really could cut the number of pictures by about 50% with just a bit of 'highlight/delete'. And yet...
Its in this scatter shot group of digital information that I think my 'real' pictures can be found. Its easy enough to focus on the pristine, well composed moments in time, and to think that they represent the full picture of who we are. And who would know or even care if I was to simply remove the not good enough, duplicates or just plain bad bits of data.
I would.
We like to spend our time putting our best images out for the world to see. We all want to hear that we have the best looking kids, the nicest house, the hottest wife. That what we have accomplished in life has value.
In order to truly appreciate the perfect 'Kodak Moments (TM)' , we have to be willing and open to not just looking at the bad pictures, but be ready and accepting of others telling us that ..."gee, not your best side in that shot."
Just because we can...don't delete.
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