I’m constantly reminded of the power of photography and the memories that can be created and kept for generations, even if the memory becomes only a story. A friend on mine from work came to me and was hoping I could help him with something his family truly cherished. He rolled out two very torn and destroyed rolls of parchment that had the images of his uncle, mother and grandparents. A flood had torn through their house some time ago and the damage was evident. He asked me if I could touch it up as best as I could, to bring back some missing pieces. I was actually really excited for the challenge and to see the images come back to life.

It makes me think about how lucky we are to have the digital universe to store our images for safe keeping. But at the same time, I don’t have very many images printed from throughout the years. It used to be one of my favorite things to do to go through old photographs in dusty old shoe boxes out of my closet and come across that one image you had forgotten about. We’ve come a long way from film. Sure, digital images save us time from searching for the right box that one photo is in, and money from printing all of them just to get a few really good ones, but there’s something precious about a print. It makes the memory that much more real and cherished. And as for my friend, the fact that he could hold an image of his grandparents was something that meant a lot to him.

So with the new year I’ve decided to make one of my resolutions to print more of my memories and organize them into their own boxes according to year. I really think I’ll thank myself one day.

Hope the new year is treating everyone well!

-B