Saved on my hard-drive are dated folders containing all the digital photos I’ve ever snapped: day folders nestled in month folders filed by their appropriate year. I’ve never counted how many photos I’ve taken then filed in this manner, but both the snapping and the stockpiling seem a bit obsessive, as if I’m hoarding canned goods in my larder against an imagined Apocalypse. “If disaster strikes,” some paranoid inner voice seems to intone, “at least I’ll have plenty of pictures!”
On the one hand, I snap pictures I think I might someday blog, my eye always looking for something new or noteworthy. On the other hand, there are certain things I can’t help but photograph even though I’ve already blogged and re-blogged them so many times, I no longer have anything new to say. What more can be said about the fresh, new leaves of spring, or how many more posts about flowers can I share?
At this point, I’ve recognized that having a teeming archive of random photos is largely useless. Even if I, at some future date, decide I want to revisit the photo I took of Object X some Y months ago, there’s the question of whether I’ll ever find it: did I take that picture in January or March or May, and was it this year or last? Even when I can find a “vintage” photo, my Inner Ethicist has qualms about frequently posting pictures from the past. In my mind, Hoarded Ordinaries is a chronicle of Life Right Now, so if I post too many pictures from last week, last month, or last year, the sense of immediacy is lost. To me at least, frequently posting archival pictures feels like cheating.
What I’m describing here is something of a personal conundrum. On the one hand, I insist on taking pictures without knowing exactly when or how I’ll use them, and I save these pictures rather than methodically tossing them. On the other hand, I’m hesitant to post archival images except in moments of blog-duress, when I’m desperate for something to share. If I were indeed hoarding canned goods, I’d be in the perilous predicament of saving up food I can’t by ethical precept actually eat, like a vegetarian stockpiling cans of beef stew. In such a scenario, how can you ever actually dig your way through your own accumulative impulses?
Today has been a literal rainy day. This morning I took Reggie on an abbreviated (but nevertheless soggy) walk; since then, I’ve spent the day doing laundry and grading online papers. If I were to create a dated photo folder titled 2008-06-04, that folder would necessarily be empty since I took no pictures today. What better excuse to revisit a handful of otherwise useless images I snapped before meeting friends for Sunday’s Art Walk in Beacon Hill? When else, exactly, will an occasion arise when I might need a photo of fruit and flowers outside Savenor’s, several shots of an equestrian statue of George Washington, and an extreme close-up of an allium?
Ultimately (and perhaps paradoxically), I think what enchants me most about the photos I take is exactly this sense of utter uselessness. The world doesn’t need another photo of George Washington strutting on horseback through the Public Garden; the world will be in no way improved by another snapshot of fruit and flowers. But when has utility or sense ever governed creative pursuits? “O reason not the need,” Shakespeare exhorted in King Lear. “Our basest beggars / Are in the poorest thing superfluous.” Even on rainy days, we’re collectively blessed with more than we’ll ever want or need. If the Universe continually insists on presenting us with spring leaves, ripe fruit, eye-catching flowers, statues, and souls, why shouldn’t we continue to notice and savor them, stockpiling for imagined Apocalypses we can’t yet begin to fathom?
Jun 4, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Heh. Very nice. I, too, have an exorbitant number of photos on my hard drive. There have been occasions, albeit rare, when I’ve searched through old photos looking for something in particular – and unfortunately found in many cases that I must have deleted the originals and kept only much downsized versions. But you never know when they might come in handy, and short of an apocalypse! I recently happily found (and posted) some old photos I took at Fenway with my dad in 2004.
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Jun 5, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Yes, I tell myself “it’s better to have them & not need them than need them & not have them.” Of course, this precise mentality is why my parents’ house contains as much “potentially useful” stuff as it does!
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Jun 6, 2008 at 6:36 pm
I’m sure everyone with a digit camera, or perhaps any camera, has the same problem. It’s quite frustrating when you can remember a shot and want to use it for something, remember exactly where it was taken, the approximate date, and still can’t find it.
i bought Aperture to start cataloging my photos, but, of course, it takes hours on hours to add labels, much less ratings, to all my photos.
Even when I think I’ve edited vigorously I have way more photos than anyone in their right mind is going to want to go through if, and when, I should pass on.
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Jun 7, 2008 at 9:30 am
Someone on a garden tour with me the other day noticed how many pictures I was taking, and asked what I did with all of them. I was left to mumble that, well, I put some of them on my blog…
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Jun 7, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Loren, I’m not familiar with Aperture, but in theory I could use Flickr’s tagging feature to sort & easily find photos for later use. But as you mention, it takes a lot of time to sort through, upload, and tag photos, so I usually upload to Flickr only those photos I have immediate plans for. The rest remain, unaltered, in their folders.
I’m curious, Rurality: how did your “confession” about blogging some of your pictures go over with the person who asked? I’m afraid I’d get even weirder looks than I normally do… 🙂
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Jun 7, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Just because you take them for blogging doesn’t mean you won’t want them for something else some other time. A book about Keene? Articles? Something else?
And — they don’t spoil, they don’t get dusty, and they don’t take up any space (disk space is so cheap these days that having “enough” is a no-brainer)…………..
My photos are stored as yours are. I need to upgrade my photoshop elements, and plan to spend some time tagging photos in the new version. Then I will be able to find things without much pawing. I find that I can remember pretty well which year I took certain pics, and can pretty much narrow down which month (within a month or two). So there’s not *that* much to hunt through.
I tell myself that when I look for paper pictures, I still have to paw through, looking for a particular one. It’s a lot faster to look at a page of thumbnails on the screen than to go through a box of photos (or worse yet, a book of them)……..
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Jun 8, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Yes, I’ve got loads of stuff on a hard drive categorised only into folder by month/year taken – and when I set it up I was inordinately proud of even that very basic filing. Which of course is pretty useless really.
Perhaps our relative inefficiency will encourage in us a sort of Garry Winogrand sort of belated reappraisal which will bring forth hidden gems in the future mined from the past.
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Nov 5, 2010 at 8:30 am
[…] producing a month’s worth of illustrated blog-posts is easier if you’re in the habit of stockpiling images to use on days when light and inspiration are sparse. This year, I’m taking my […]
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