“I HATE having my picture taken!”
Do YOU hate getting your picture taken as much as I do?
Please read this and let’s try to change our ways together.
I don't think I've ever liked it all that much... but I still do it every now and then. This day in age cameras are everywhere and it is really quite simple to have a "picture" taken but what I want to talk to you about is something a little different. Just a week or two ago I think it was a FB friends thread about pictures being taken with filters. In that thread I mentioned that having your picture taken is something that you leave behind to your future kin like when they are building those family trees on ancestry websites or just decorating the mantle. I also said that having a great picture minus all these filters like rabbit ears and whiskers may be a good idea as well as storing them properly outside of that phone you seem to break yearly. All this being said.... here is what happened a few days later:
A kind elderly lady phoned my business line and asked if I do "image manipulation?". I was a little busy and was briefly tempted to say "no" but instead I asked her to explain what she was looking for. She went on to tell me that her sister had just recently passed away and she wanted to have a grave marker with her image on it. The only problem was she only had 2 pictures of her sister and both were way too small, dark, out of focus, tonally unbalanced and with all kinds of things in the background from a closet to a hand. 2 pictures and the largest one was 202kb (small) that she was calling around trying to get someone to work some magic on. So what I am saying is DO NOT do this to your loved ones! Along with updating your Will, final wishes and affairs.... update your pictures too. How many times have you seen an obituary in the news paper that had a H.S. picture of someone that died in their 80's? Though that is going to be a far better scenario than what is going to happen in mass in a few decades.... H.S. portraits are going to be replaced with all these crazy filters that disguise what you really looked like to your great great grandchildren. I can tell you that sadly some of my portraits have been used for funerals and obituaries and while it is a very weird feeling as a photographer in the same breath I can tell you that I was also very happy that those people did indeed have those portraits done. I've only had 1 person come to me and say "I'm dying and this is the portrait I will leave my family".... because we rarely get to know when we are going to die... and then perhaps once we do our health turns so quickly that we may not want our picture taken.
I don't care how old you are and after covid years everyone should realize that you may or MAY NOT have as much time as you think you do. So stop thinking that way and make it a regular occurrence to get that picture taken every 2 years..... but not just for death.... do it for life. Document your zest for life and leave those pictures where someone can access them when you are not around. Decades after you're gone those pictures will be appreciated by people you may never meet so make sure your back up plan is solid and that THAT back up plan has a back up plan. Example: Images on your phone or computer. Back up plan is a Cloud service PLUS and external hard drive.... I would say prints but that would be wasted on most people these days. Remember though... if you are the only one with the passwords to your phone/computer, cloud or hard drive after you are gone... then no one else can get to them.
Now I’m not saying that I 100% practice what I’m preaching here what I’m saying is WE can do better! After I received that phone call I had my parents come for an updated portrait because there is no reason they shouldn’t have several with a photographer son. On the flip side of that the picture of me above is from a family trip to California and out of approximately 800 photos taken….. this is the.one.photo. that actually proves I was there because I handed my camera off. (photo credit to my sister Heather). The kids were very young when this trip was taken and I’m sure that if not for this one image (and hopefully remembering that I took the pictures of them) that one day their kids would be asking if grandpa was on the trip. It’s a far off thought as I am not even a grandfather yet (kids, take your time please lol)…. but as I said above this is not about you. It’s about future generations you may never actually meet.
"The problem is you think you have time"
-Buddah
Get it done my friends….
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