June 23, 2009 07:56 pm
—
Last week I mentioned having visited my sophisticated 3-month-old grandson in New York state.
Now don’t stop reading. This column is not about how cute he is or his quick smiles or baby blues. It would make a dandy column though, wouldn’t it?
No, this has to do with photography now and in the past.
OK, maybe it does have something to do with grandson Henry as well.
Leaving New York, I had nearly 250 photos of the little guy. Henry drinking a bottle. Henry at Best Buy. Henry doing tummy time.
Other, shorter visits with Henry have still resulted in well over 100 photographs.
A year ago, I scanned all of my grandfather’s slides into the computer and made CDs for the family. I found exactly one photo of my grandfather and myself when I was infant.
There might have been a dozen photos of myself as an infant altogether. My grandfather liked to take pictures and he wasn’t bad at it.
Even when son Derek was born and I took lots and lots of photos, the numbers pale in comparison to what I’ve taken of Henry.
The reason, of course, is we have reached the digital age. For Christmas, in anticipation of grandparentdom, I asked Santa for a new digital single lens reflex (or SLR) camera.
It is my second digital camera and allows me to take 3.2 frames per second. You can adjust settings to get pretty decent photos in low-light conditions without resorting to the flash. It also has an exceptional auto focus.
So the upshot is you don’t have to be Ansel Adams to take pretty decent photographs. You just adjust some settings, fill the lens with your subject, press the shutter and allow it to take picture after picture.
If you have a highly photogenic subject, like possibly a grandson, it is easy to accumulate photos.
After all, you don’t have to buy film at $4 to $6 a roll. You don’t have to pay $9 or so to develop and print all of the photos, whether you like them or not.
A $17 memory card, which costs about the same as a role of film and its development, can hold thousands of photos. After the photos are downloaded to computer or a CD, it can be used again and again.
You can then just pick and choose what photos you want printed.
If you don’t want to print them, buy a digital photo frame, put all of your photos on it and enjoy them all.
This isn’t a period in history in which to be camera shy. Every cell phone today has a camera and today’s smart phones offer fairly decent quality. Many even offer video.
Some consumer cameras are so small, people take them anywhere they go.
So your chances of being caught on camera with a mouthful of food or your finger up your nose are much greater today. Well, unless you don’t eat and don’t put your finger up your nose. Who doesn’t do those things?
Just when you think you are safe, Google comes down your street, taking photographs for its Google Maps feature. Smile when they do!
But take heart, many of these photographs don’t survive or reside on a tiny speck of a memory card for years to come, with nobody ever seeing them.
Even a decade ago, professional photographers were shooting in digital.
When Bill Clinton was president, there was a White House event. In line to greet the president was Monica Lewinsky, whom we learned later had a bit of a relationship with the prez.
Except nobody knew that at the time. When it was her turn in line, Bill gave Monica a hug. It was probably a joke between them.
After the scandal broke, a photograph of that hug was widely distributed.
But here is the inside story: Most photographers shot digitally even then. Photographers chose the photos from the event they wanted to give to their editors. The Lewinsky photos weren’t used. They weren’t anything special and nobody knew who she was.
So after the pictures were sent to the editors, the rest of the photos, including hugging Monica, were wiped clean.
It was one photographer still using film who went back in his files and pulled out the Monica photo that everyone used.
So take heart, just because you get your photo taken doesn’t mean it will end up anywhere. It may be reformatted to make room for more photos that won’t be seen anywhere.
Now don’t despair about little Henry Lebzelter. His photos, even those taken a half-second apart, have been preserved on hard drive, on DVD, at Facebook and at a photo sharing site.
Sometimes, through the magic of digital photography and the Internet, the world of photography can take a bizarre turn.
Take the Jeff and Danielle Smith family of Missouri. Last year they had a family portrait taken with their son and daughter. They send copies to friends. They posted it with their blog. They sent it to a few social networking sites.
Months later, some college friends of the family were traveling through Prague when they passed a restaurant. In front was a life-sized photo of the Smith family, apparently to show this is a family restaurant where everyone is happy.
Restaurant owner Mario Bertuccio said he grabbed the photo off the Internet. He thought it was computer generated and wasn’t even a real family!
But he promises to make amends. He will e-mail an apology to the family and give them a bottle of wine. All they have to do is drive to his restaurant in the Czech republic to pick it up.
Now that would be a picture.
Lebzelter is special sections editor. E-mail him at bobleb@starbeacon.com.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.
Photos
