3.25.2010

Why Do You Do It?

I know I can count on my friends to help me out with something. In June I am going to be teaching a workshop on Photography and how it relates to Family History. You see, our Stake is putting on a Family History Fair for the CITY and I was asked to do this class for it.

I'm shaking in my socks.

I love photography. I love keeping records and recording history. But I don't know where to start with THIS.

I have come as far as developing a title for the class. Hooray for me! It's going to be called: "Photography: Recording History, Sharing Memories" At least I can say I've come that far.

Here is where I need YOUR input.

WHY do YOU take pictures? 

I want to pick your brains to know WHY you bother to take pictures. What are your reasons?

And second question:

WHAT do you DO with your pictures?

I want to get an idea of what most people do with their photos, then decide how to base my lesson. Do you keep them in an album? Do you write about what is happening in the photos? Do you hang them on the wall? Are they all stored on your computer? And why do you keep them that way?

Can you help? I knew I could count on you! I'll try posting the information from the class on here later, so all of you can glean from my wisdom (Ba ha ha ha!)

7 comments:

Clair said...

Oh Bobbi- you'll do great!

I take pictures because photography is my chosen medium for a creative outlet- it fits perfectly into this time of my life when I have 4 young ones underfoot whose growth needs documented.

Unfortunately I'm not really great about doing anything with the pictures other than blogging- or using them for business/promotional purposes for my small time photography biz. In the back of my mind my blog is to one day become a book through blurb, but I haven't done much with that.

I think if I were taking your class I would really need a push to do something with my prints other than let them sit on my hard drive- maybe some inspiration about a simple album or fun wall display. Anothter thing I could really get a kick in the pants for is backing up that hard drive. I KNOW it needs done, but haven't gotten very far on that either!

That's just me, but I think that since going digital it has become less of a priorty for a lot of people to get the photos printed and displayed in some way.

One thing I'm pretty good at is keeping the files organized on my computer-- i sort by months and use the formula year/month#/month ie (2010 03 March) that way they show up chronologically.

Good luck!

Joanne said...

i display, i scrapbook, I write about it on blogs and in scrapbooks.I do it to remember all the LITTLE THINGS> the things I wish my parents recorded in my younger lifetime. I love pics, digital age is so awesome and cheap that we can't afford NOT to be recording our memories. does that help???

Tiffany said...

Ditto to all that. Plus, I take them from the angle that I see them. I love close shots of my kids, when they're not looking. It's a still memory of that moment.

Lynn said...

Oh man! That sure makes me wished I lived closer. I would be there for your class for sure. You will be GREAT!

1. Why do I take pictures?

Well, I hardly have any of when I was a child. My parents didn't have the means. My in laws even had less of the means...hence I have NO baby pictures of my hubby. It makes us both sad. So record like crazy for our own kids. They love to read my blog and see how I write about them and their lives and what pictures I choose to put on there.

They've gone from "You are NOT going to put that on your blog are you? to "You will PUT that on your blog right?" LOL!

2. What do you do with your pictures?

I most just keep them on the computer for inputing in my family's history (the blog). I would print them off if I could to put in albums, but like our parents, the means is not there. Thank goodness for modern technology. Some day I will print off the pages into a blog book. For now I save and back it all up onto a hard drive and onto CD'S in a fireproof safe.

I hope you share with us some of your notes from your class! I would love to read about it.

Paula said...

1. I take photos to document our lives and to have something to look back on to remember the moments. I think photos are very important. I've been working on my family history and I cherish the photos I have of my ancestors. I always wish I had many, many more.

I also use photography as my creative outlet. Like you, I do this as a profession. I love the fact that I can capture the moments and memories for the families I photograph.

2. Unfortunately,my time is at a minimum with a busy little two year old boy ruling my life. The little time I get to edit is used for my clients so many of our family photos are consequently still on my computer, unedited and unprinted. Put it this way; I am still back in 2004! When the photos do get printed I put them in to sequential photo albums and label them with dates, times and names. I also scrapbook my favourite photos (again when I have time since I mostly scrapbook classes and kit designs for the scrapbook store I work at).

Can't wait to hear about your class! Too bad I am not in the area to attend it!

Mary said...

Congratulations on your up coming photography class.I have been following your blog for quite some time because I *love* the photos that you share. I think you are brilliant and so very talented!

I take photos to document my life. I have very few photos to show for the first 30 years of my life or of my 2 grown childrens lives. I think I have about 5 photos of my parents and that is about it. I take photos of my husband,myself, our children and grandchildren every chance I get. I have been doing this seriously since I turned 46. That was when I got my very first decent camera.Better late then never. You can always hear some one in my family say "oh here she comes with the camera again". :) I also took a photography class 2 years ago so that I could learn how to use my camera in manual mode.I love taking photos so some days I will take pictures of the shoes that I am wearing or some thing that interests me. I try and think outside of the box.

I have made many scrapbooks for everyone in my famiy. I have blogged some of my photos and now I make digital pages , print them out and make more books. At present I am working on a book about myself so that my children will know me as a person and not just as mom. I dsiplay some of my photos too.

I store my photos on a back up drive and I pay a yearly fee to have them stored at Kodak.com This way if we ever had a fire (Lord forbid) my photos are safe. I alos have thousands of photos that I have had printed up. So not all of my photos stay just on my computer. I will never get around to scrapbooking them all but perhaps one or more of our children will like to have them.

Sorry this is so long. Good luck with your class and have fun.

Mary

Andrea said...

I take photos mostly for memories- to remember moments, to enjoy looking back, and to preserve who we are back at that point of time.

I love to have photos displayed in frames throughout the house (still working on that since our move months ago), a few scrapbooks, blog (a bit). Mostly they sit on the computer, or in a photo book. I'm just now doing digital books- the project life, and I have done a year in review for 2008 and working on 2009.
Everyone loves to look at books and see how things were. There's already lots of things I've forgotten of just the past year.
Plus it's always fun to see parents/ grandparents in the younger years and realize they were our age once too.
Sorry for the long answer.