The death of pictures began with the advent of the shoebox. However, if you don’t have a shoebox full of pictures like I do, then you probably have a folder (or 10) full of them on your laptop, like I do– and there they rest, left undisturbed for essentially ever.
That is comical, but all joking matters aside– our pictures are collecting dust and fading into nothingness. Mine are at least and it saddens me. I caught myself thinking about how I used to love taking pictures. I started wondering what happened to that love and what happened to those pictures. The ones that weren’t unviewed in my albums, collecting dust in my shoebox or wasting away in a folder on my computer were still left to be taken– I realized.
I remembered that my nephew’s wedding was next month and maybe that’s why I started thinking about pictures all together.
Besides the pictures that were left undisturbed and to waste, I had a grand engagement to take pictures at and I looked forward to it. I love pictures and all of the excitement they bring, but it seems as if they’ve lost their place in our culture. Except for picture-messaging and good, old-fashion frames pictures are nearly nonexistent now.
That’s when I discovered a new way share my pictures with those I love.
I came across this website that takes my pictures– be they in a shoebox, album, bag, folder or what have you –and they put them into a fully-animated slideshow for you. They created a theme, and added custom backgrounds, animated titles, and even wrote a poem. At first I was skeptical, I thought slideshows were for business and school only– I’m serious. I hadn’t even considered slideshows, but they took pictures of my daughter’s baby shower 7 years ago and made them dynamic. They put the slideshow on a DVD that I can show family and friends– in person or by email.
In just a few weeks , I’ll try to take the best pictures of Dylan’s marriage. Then I’ll have a custom slideshow made afterwards. I’ll send it to everyone that is important to me as a gift; they’ll love it. Then in a few years, when I’m entertaining them as guests, I’ll sneak up stairs and remove on of those DVDs from my shoebox and bring the surprise down to everyone below– a dynamic, fully-animated, professional, enrapturing presentation of pictures.