I started the process of digitizing my old VCR tapes. I had thought to combine them into a show. I've discovered however that it will be quite difficult to do that in any meaningful way. What I mean is, still photographs are much easier to combine into a slide show. My thinking is that is simply because, as the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Each picture engages our mind, while moving ones are simply viewed without thought. I've also discovered the truth behind home movies, they do quickly become boring, even when you are watching your own grandchildren.
I will still digitize all those tapes for safe keeping and in the hopes future generation will be able to view them. They are alright if watched once every few years or so. Any sooner and they might as well be in five-dollar video bin at the Walmart. Those bins are also the place old books go to die. I'm thinking now I will simply copy those tapes, as is, without any editing and place them on flash drives. I have purchased a video editing software program thinking I could use that for this project. Turns out I won't need it for this but I'm certain I can make use of it for other projects. I'm not interested in making movies though, I'll leave that to those far more talented than I.
It's funny really. The pictures I treasure the most are mostly in black and white. Those are the sentimental ones handed down to me from past generations. There are a precious few that I remember taking myself. Now color photography has been around since before the Civil War but wasn't common, mainstream stuff until the early sixties. It was available, but expensive to the average person. I have one picture in particular taken of my sister using the Polaroid Swinger camera. But I do have many taken after that in color. Today we take pictures with such frequency that little isn't recorded. I don't have a single picture of a meal my mother made. I have lots of pictures of cakes, cookies, main courses, and all manner of food. Enough to make an album just using them!
I thought having videos would be the best thing ever. It isn't that I don't enjoy them, but they aren't nearly what I thought they might be. I've found they just don't hold your interest as long as a single photograph may. When sharing photographs with others you get to tell the story, offer an explanation. You have to search the background of the photograph to find the clues. Perhaps it is obvious, a young you in front of a birthday cake. In others a description is required.
I'm thinking that it must have been wonderful back in the old days when events and people were painted/photographed with others' memories. When the stories told were the only connection to the past. Then man began to draw pictures, to leave a record of what they had seen or done. Language was developed to tell the tales. Today every nuance is captured, every image, every word or sound. Still, it is the imagination that entertains us all. It is a lack of imagination that creates boredom. I find myself wondering, imagining, what the occasion and the thoughts were when a picture was taken. When those that were there are no longer here, that can be difficult. Sometimes it is difficult when you were there!
I have this picture of myself and a childhood friend. The picture was taken in 1954, July the Twentieth 1954 to be exact. You see, we share a common birthday, and the picture commemorates our first birthday. I don't remember that firsthand but know the story. Yes, it was taken in black and white with the Brownie box camera I remember from my youth. It was a special occasion. You know we all remember the past as we imagined it to be, pictures provide the proof. Perception and Imagination can be the same thing.
Barry Collum on the left, Little Ben Reichart on the right.
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