Like one of the ladies up above says… from the 70’s 80’s and 90’s in boxes. But the rest are on my computer! which is dangerous i know. We currently live in a condo with no wall space and nowhere to put “things”. which is nice in one way. but it means i can’t even hang any family pictures on the walls. i have nowhere to set frames. i do miss pictures. broke down and bought one of those digital frames and can’t figure out how to work the damn thing! so it’s got a billion pictures on it and only shows ONE.

I did have all my old VHS tapes of the kids transerred to CD’s.

PS. - I got up at 4am to finish a paper for school and what am i doing? uh uh… I’m on wow! dang this wowowow site lol!

Now, I store the pix on my computer and print some of the ones I like. But, I much prefer my old print pictures. I have had a houseguest from France staying with me this weekend, and we spent yesterday evening looking at old print pictures of my late husband when we were visiting with her in France back in ‘96. We both agreed that the digitals do not take the place of sitting on a cozy sofa and looking at pictures the old fashioned way. Because my dad was a professional photographer, pictures have been a very important part of my life for as long as I can remember.

My mother, way ahead of her time, set a good example of keeping all photos in scrapbooks from the time she was in grade school. My sisters and I each got our own books with duplicate pictures. I did the same for my 3 boys thru High School so that when they FINALLY get married they can take their books with them. Funny thing - whenever they bring a new girlfriend home, or even some old HS friends … the first thing they do is pull out the old picture albums. Happened this weekend with my youngest son’s new girlfriend… she just HAD to see pictures of him when he was “little” Now I just do a family scrapbook but I am a bit of a fanatic about it … I get nervous if I let 6 months go by because with my digital cameras I probably take 1000 pictures a year. I use the big 12X 12 albums with acid free paper with vinyl overlays and I collage the pictures to fit as many on the page as possible. NO, I DO NOT do “scrapbooking” …. I think it is cheesy, contrived and takes away from the photos ! ( Sorry for the rant ) I keep my pictures on the computer and once a year transfer them to a disc. I heard a discussion from Tech experts about the best way to preserve digital pictures. What happens if some time in the future discs are out, remember casettes ? Blue Ray is already overtaking DVDs, possibly some time in the future computers will not read CDs. Their suggestion was that first, print out the pictures and keep them in an archival book or box, second, store them on a separate hard drive. My favorite thing about digital cameras is that you can show the pictures on your TV screen, and boy, they look great on a big flat screen TV. You can get 2GB photo cards at Staples for $20 so you can store hundreds, photos & movies, on each card.

OH, I almost forgot … do you all know about making photo books online ? You can do it on Kodak Easyshare, or Picassa or any number of online photo sharing sites. A few years ago we took the family to Ireland and for Christmas I downloaded the best pictures to Kodak Easyshare and made 3 hardcover photo books . They are absolutely beautiful, not expensive and make great gifts. Turnaround time is about 1 week. last night I made 2009 photo calendars on iPhoto … and the coolest feature is putting a photo on the date square for all the birthdays. $19.99 per calendar !!

I’ll always snatch up a pretty photo album if I find it at a good price. My children do the digital thing, so I’ve added a few discs to my collection, but I like the prints in the albums method best. And I have my favorites in frames…usually about four or five deep under the glass, since kids change from year to year, and most of the framed prints are too large to put in an album, so I figure they’re safer in the frame. My seventh grandchild was born yesterday, at 3:49am. 7lbs. 21 ounces. Her Daddy’s due home (Ft. Sill, Oklahoma) from Korea tonight at 8:30. He lost his cell phone and doesn’t know she’s here yet. Her mama sent a “first photo” of Maria Yvette to my cell phone last night. She’s a beauty. But I just hate it that I have no idea how (or even IF) I can print it and save it. They’re all coming for Christmas, so I’m hoping my son will be able to help me figure it out. I find this digital age altogether frustrating most of the time.

Workin on it! I’m still playing catch up-just call me an old timer techie newbie in every since of the word. I started with my cell phone taking pictures but never had the time to really figure out how to take good pics or videos. Two yrs ago I won a digital camera (wait I had a digital camera on my Windows Millieum 2000 PC but never used it) and was not very good. Just started using the digital camera but have not developed anything yet or hooked up to my relatively new cool PC. In October ‘08, I won a mini camcorder -currently reading instructions. I’m most comfortable with those neat throw away cameras which I get developed on CDs and one set of pictures. Like another wowOwow poster I love my real pics. I’m also going to the expense of restoring selective olden pics that my mom is turning over to me as she continues to age. It’s amazing what they can do with old, faded pics today. I have them put on CD and send them off to my family. All in all I’m getting there. But it does take time. I still have a huge collection of pics that I had planned to put in “scrapping” albums with lots of decorations. But with digital-it seems a dated thing to do. Gotta think about what to do now. Also, I have one of those flash drive thing-ies but have no idea how to use it.

My photographs are in boxes, on my computer external hard drives (3 of them), DVD/CD’s, on websites and on a couple of stock photography sites. A winery just asked me to submit some of my photographs which I digital transform in to artwork. This was discussed before if anyone is interested in scanning their photographs here is a service. http://www.scanmyphotos.com/

I’m photos in my mind, where they are most clear.