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The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
March 10 - March 16, 2005 Edition
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the BIG picture March 10, 2005 By Anna Marie D'Addarie
Digital cameras are no longer a novelty. According to a recent Digital Imaging Consumer Survey, in 2003 more than 27 percent of households owned a digital (still) camera. That percentage has increased, as the digital camera was the top electronics gift this past Christmas. The same survey asked respondents why they use a digital camera. The number one response was “to preserve memories,” with “to send photos by e-mail” coming in a close second. My own straw poll revealed comments like, “I feel the pictures are safer when they are saved on a disc then when they are in boxes in the basement.” Another said “Seeing yourself on paper can shock you into recognizing some corporal truth, like, ‘oh my God is that what I look like in pleated chinos?’” You can’t beat digital cameras for instant gratification. One mother returns home from her child’s soccer game and loads the photos into the computer. She chooses a good one to use as a screensaver for the computer. The children know how to edit the photos too. Within minutes, all the photos are downloaded, edited, stored, and e-mailed. Someday my prints will come Wait. Slow down. What has happened to the good old-fashioned print? Pictures are so much a part of our history. Families treasure pictures of ancestors. We are a visual society and images are important to us. Sadly, fewer prints are being made. The immediacy of digital photography has actually resulted in fewer photos being printed. Memories are being erased, on purpose or by mistake, with the touch of the delete key. When computers crash they often take with them an entire lifetime of photos. One person told me he thought his photos were safe because he stored them on his server at work. When his company was bought out, the new company wiped out all non-work related files. All his pictures disappeared. Gone in a nanosecond. Psychologists agree that children benefit from having family photos displayed. Family photos create a feeling of well-being and security, and photos of the children enhance the child’s self-esteem. Discs full of digital images are just not the same. Compare the experience of sitting around looking at an album full of photos with that of being huddled around the computer clicking through digital images. Digital camera owners can print photos from their home computers. Photographic paper can be loaded in your printer, and voila, you have prints. Well, not exactly viola. More like, “I can’t believe how long it takes to print one picture.” And did you know that photos printed on that expensive photo paper are not guaranteed to last? The only photos that will last are those printed on archival paper, the type of paper they use at your local photo shop.Carlos to the rescue Armed with a roll of film to be developed and my digital camera blinking “card full,” I visited Mosher Photo in Vineyard Haven to ask owner Carlos Stevenson for some advise. “I’ve been ready for this (the digital photography revolution) for the past three and a half years,” said Carlos. His enthusiasm for the new technology and how it can enhance family photography got me excited about the advantages of marrying digital and traditional processing. Photos can be edited or manipulated using your home computer and the result will be better than the original. A teacher told me her class made a quilt as a gift for another teacher. When the photo was taken to be included in the gift, one student was absent. Using her computer, the teacher digitally added the student’s image. This class photo and the quilt will certainly be treasured for a lifetime. Think about this type of technology the next time you take that family reunion photo. Mosher Photo offers the same web service as the large on-line companies such as SnapFish.com. Any photos, digital or film, can be uploaded and stored on a secure server. From the homepage you can view, edit, e-mail, and order prints of your photos. You can also organize your photos is separate electronic albums. And the best part is all these services are available to his customers for free. To test the system I got my roll of film developed and had my digital photos put online. For a small annual fee ($19.95) a customer can purchase space (512 MB) on the secure server for his or her photos. If you are getting a roll of film developed, Mosher’s will upload it for free, so the photos will be on line and in your hand too. By the afternoon, my film was developed, my digital images were on line, and I was editing and ordering prints from my computer. It was easy to e-mail photos. I made a special folder for photos of my new kitty, Hop-a-long, and e-mailed the link to my family. They viewed the photos and if they wanted to could even order prints. It was so easy. The Mosher Photo site is secure, meaning only people you invite may view your photos. When you e-mail photos from Mosher Photo, you are really e-mailing a link that invites that person to view only the photos you want them to see. All the online services are offered for free for any roll of film or digital images. For 60 days a customer can edit and share photos from the Mosher Photo site. The baby with the bathwater It is almost impossible for someone to keep ahead of the new technology. If anyone can, it’s Carlos. He is a geek at heart. He feels passionate about people printing photos, and not because it’s good for business. It saddens him to think of all the great family photos that will never be seen again because they got deleted from a digital camera. “With a digital camera, you get 24 keepers,” Carlos said. So why not get them printed? His shop uses archival paper and the photos will last a lifetime. Carlos sees his shop as a bridge to the latest technology. Customers can have all the advantages of the digital world and preserve photos both on line and in family scrapbooks. Whether you believe it or not, photos of your bad-hair day, or your miscreant brother holding up v-shaped fingers behind your head, or you in less than flattering pleated pants will be treasured memories for years to come. If this article were a movie, the camera would slowly move in on a family sitting around a living room, perhaps together for a holiday. Laughter erupts as another photo is passed around. The photo sparks a memory, and someone begins to tell a story. Slow fade to black. Editor’s Note: The Times does not alter news photographs, except for cropping or other enhancements that improve the sharpness or other printed quality of the image. With non-news photographs, significant adjustments to the original image will be noted in caption material accompanying its publication. When changes made by Times designers warrant it, our policy is to label the image an illustration. |
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