Pints with Polk: Photographs

10 September 2016

Photographs

My favourite kind of photograph.

The older I get the more important photographs become. Most of my memories of events come from those photos themselves as opposed to actually remembering them. Its odd, but the further away I get from my childhood, the more I cling to those pictures as evidence of my life before now. Grainy 70's shots look odd and while I know intellectually that is me in the photo, I can't remember that particular moment or how I felt. I'm not sure when that started to happen to me but it seems to be the norm as I get older.

My childhood is commemorated by a lot of photos, especially when we are little. Captured moments of unscripted joy, unhurried lives and a bright future. At play, formal for those family events when we'd be dressed up and looking our best or just hanging around the house; we have documentation that we were there, we existed and those things happened. Moving into my teenage years, they become less frequent because I wasn't around as much and we had started the inevitable moves into our own orbits with friends, lovers and lives. There are many years where there are just a handful of photos with me in them because I was off on my own journey and that did not include a lot of pictures. I wish I could find more from when I was 17 to 25 but I am not certain that many exist.

The advent of an affordable digital camera and subsequent improvements in cell phone technology has led to an explosion of pictures, good and bad, and it has made accessing those memories easier because we are always snapping shots.

I love to peruse Facebook or Instagram and see the pictures of my extended family and friends' and their ever growing brood. Time and distance has made it difficult to actually spend time with some of those people, so those cute shots on the Internet are my window into their lives. I have become a fan of taking a few shots myself with all my craft beer pictures, but it's become far more than beer that has captured my eye. I see the world in a new light because I am always looking for a unique way to show off the bottles in my collection and that in turn has led to my seeing things I've never noticed before and my camera finds them too.

. The digital revolution means my life in the last 10 years has far surpassed its documentation through photos than in the previous 30. I can look at my memories with the click of a button and there are times when I get lost for hours going through the albums on my computer reminiscing about days gone by. It's easier to catch a whisp in time now because we have such easy access to a way to do it and I am thankful for that. These pictures tell a story and the more we have, the better that story gets.