Saturday, November 7, 2015

The Family Photo Legacy

My 90+ father recently joined the assisted living crowd. We are cleaning out his old place, and I've been tasked with sorting through his snapshot collection.

Innocently clothed in drugstore processor envelopes are images of holidays, vacations, weddings, reunions, new babies, funerals, and my mother's apparent favorites: Dimly lit church basement dinners depicting unknown seniors as they tuck into meatballs and jello.

Nowadays we delete bad photos from digital cameras and smartphones soon after they are taken. Back in the day you paid for processing (and my dad always took the discount double print deal), and depression mentality meant that every picture was precious and saved.

Overexposed? You can still see Aunt Louella's body shape.

Heads cut off? You can identify Uncle Joe by his shoes.

Out of focus? It's impressionist art.

Clearly, my parents never met a photo they didn't like.

Anyone up for a "mass quantities of bad photos" challenge? I'm so there.

See the examples (of some of the better photos, I might add) below. Was the pic of the beautiful red brick on the side of the store ruined when those people ran in and lined up? Can you find the bull in the shadow at this bullfight?

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