printing old photos
I sort of hate digital photos. They collect into these massive folders, and they sit there, and they're safe (as long as they're backed up!), and you technically can look through them ... but they're just not a good way to hold memories, not for me at least. They're too fleeting.
For years, I've wanted to get in the habit of printing photos and putting them in an album to just collect memories from my life.
I graduated high school in 2010, an I'm 34 now. I only have photos going back to 2017. I had a lot of photos on an old phone that got stolen. I had a lot of photos on an old computer, which I backed up with Carbonite, but several years after ending my subscription, after notifying me & giving me months to respond, they deleted my backup. I really regret letting that get deleted. (I lost photos as well as lots of Android development work, and probably other documents too). The laptop, I think I threw it away. Sad day.
My photos since 2017 are somewhat sparse, it seems, but I still have a good number. I'm grateful to Google who'd been backing up my photos for years for free, and this is where almost all my 2017 photos come from. And a lot from 2018. Not sure about the other years.
I was able to pick out about 115 photos from 2017 to print. I'll probably prune that down to about 80, just guessing.
I did find one photo from 2013 - It's in my 2018 "google" folder, and it's of me and my girlfriend-at-the-time, dressed up, ready to go to a New Years party. I don't think I have any other photos of us, unless I can maybe find them on Facebook. I don't think they're on mine, but maybe they were on hers. We dated for a little over two years, and I have almost no evidence of it.
I have none of my photos from my high school friends or girlfriend (2.5 years with her). Thankfully, my HS GF is my best friend now, and I should be able to recover some photos from her - she's sent me some before. Would be nice to browse through em though & pick some out for myself. Two of my HS friends are also my best friends now, and one of them will have some photos, surely.
I wonder how far back I can collect photos from friends and family. Surely there's prints of some.
I noticed some of my 2017 photos are SUCH bad quality. Cameras are better now. But I'm also better at taking photos now. But it doesn't matter. I want them for the memories.
I will say, some of it is hard to look on. A Best Friend from 2017 ... well our friendship ended a few years ago. On bad terms. I've moved on like 97%, but it's still hard sometimes when I dream about her or look at old photos. I still want to reconnect. I consider trying, but I don't think I would be happy. I wasn't happy with our friendship. And then I made her miserable instead of accepting what I was unhappy about.
Anyway. Bit of a tangent, that.
I'm excited to be working on this. I suppose I should print the 2017 photos, notate them (write dates & names on the backs), albumize them, and then get onto 2018. Much less whelming that way.