Photos of boring things past

[stockportyears]

Re: Photos of boring things past

It's so much easier to take pictures of 'boring' things now, not least because you don't have to buy films and get them developed. I've kept a diary for years and this year I have started putting one picture in every day, even if it is something really mundane. In years to come even the mundane things will bring back memories.

Interesting thought. Because 2010 somehow just doesn't seem special, it's just the boring old here and now. I can look back on certain periods like the late 70s and mid 80s (wasn't too keen on the early 80s, but that's another story) and think, yeah, they were special times, and there are things that were around then which I miss now. Like going round to the newsagents on a Saturday night when I was 13, 14 and buying the Pink Final, and being amazed that I could read a report of a football match that finished 2 hours earlier! Now we've got the Internet etc, it's no big deal, but weirdly enough, I still miss going round for the Pink! (if all 13 and 14 year olds out on a Saturday night these days were looking for was the Pink Final, we'd all have a more peaceful life!)

Yet there are things we take for granted in 2010 that may just not be around in 2030 or 40, so these times may be special for younger generations coming up. What sort of pics do you put in your diary, tricky?

[Trickyvee]

Re: Photos of boring things past

Anything really. Whatever I'm doing I keep an eye out for a shot. I only started doing it in August as I didn't have a printer before then and I've been unemployed over the summer so I've had a good chance to go out and get pics. I've done quite a lot of daft things volunteering so there's pictures from that and also friends, parties, places, shops, high streets, my car, a before and after of my decorated bedroom. You name it! I just started a new job today so I took a picture of the building before I went in.

I think it is true that 'now' never feels very special, and can often feel down right awful, but before we know it we will be looking back on it with rose-tinted specs!

[Grosh62]

Anything really. Whatever I'm doing I keep an eye out for a shot. I only started doing it in August as I didn't have a printer before then and I've been unemployed over the summer so I've had a good chance to go out and get pics. I've done quite a lot of daft things volunteering so there's pictures from that and also friends, parties, places, shops, high streets, my car, a before and after of my decorated bedroom. You name it! I just started a new job today so I took a picture of the building before I went in.

I think it is true that 'now' never feels very special, and can often feel down right awful, but before we know it we will be looking back on it with rose-tinted specs!

I'm 47 still unemployed after redundancy last year and have an 11 month old baby. I have taken 1000s and 1000s of pictures during his brief life so far with my digital camera, of him, his town, his toys, his poo(only because it was bright green like pistachio ice cream and he did it on my hand while I was holding him sans nappy), his relationships with family and friends, him eating, sleeping etc etc from every day. He will have an overload of imagery, special and also mundane when he grows up and will probably never appreciate it as I would if I was now presented with pictures of my early life... but I will continue.

I have almost filled my external drive and Laptop drive already so I'm going to have to find more storage.

I think it is true that 'now' never feels very special, and can often feel down right awful, but before we know it we will be looking back on it with rose-tinted specs!

I think this is true of Christmas Day Trickyvee. Christmas usually just feels like any day to me, while it's actually happening and not at all like Christmas but then by mid year it all seemed so Christmassy.

[Megawitch]

Re: Photos of boring things past

I can't find any pictures of me as a teenager in the 60s. Because we didn't have a camera I suppose.
Now I take pictures all the time, of my grandchildren, of things I make and do with my grandchildren and also of things I make, like cards and gifts. I knit and sew a bit and I love making things for the kids. I will enjoy looking at these pictures when I'm very old and housebound.

[Jacqueline]

Re: Photos of boring things past

Tricky that sounds brilliant - what a fantastic cache of memories you and your family will have.

Grosh62 your post made me laugh. Like most of us on here I have pretty few pics of me as a baby and growing up. The camera was only used on holiday (not even birthdays/Christmas.) Things are so different now.

When I had my first child I used to take her photo in pretty much every different outfit she was dressed in. By numbers 2 and 3 that had stopped but we still have literally hundreds of photos for them to track their childhoods.

Now they all have cameras and there's no escape!

[stockportyears]

Re: Photos of boring things past

Inside Out North West tonight was superb. There was a piece about a photographer who lived in Everton in the mid 70s, and took exactly the type of pictures described here, ie on the face of it boring and humdrum, but looking at them 30-odd years later, priceless.
The guy was trying to track down some of the kids pictured playing in the photos. Sadly one lad died in his twenties from an overdose, and the lad's older brother was upset looking at the photo of his kid brother at 13 or so. There were happier stories from some of the others in the pictures, including one lad pictured in his gang's 'den' (they were all about 9 or 10) wearing a Bay City Roller hat.

Marvellous stuff, should be up on Iplayer soon for people not in NorthWest England (I gather each region has its own Inside Out programme), so I could post the link if that's okay and people want to see it?

[Grosh62]

Re: Photos of boring things past

Inside Out North West tonight was superb. There was a piece about a photographer who lived in Everton in the mid 70s, and took exactly the type of pictures described here, ie on the face of it boring and humdrum, but looking at them 30-odd years later, priceless.
The guy was trying to track down some of the kids pictured playing in the photos. Sadly one lad died in his twenties from an overdose, and the lad's older brother was upset looking at the photo of his kid brother at 13 or so. There were happier stories from some of the others in the pictures, including one lad pictured in his gang's 'den' (they were all about 9 or 10) wearing a Bay City Roller hat.

Marvellous stuff, should be up on Iplayer soon for people not in NorthWest England (I gather each region has its own Inside Out programme), so I could post the link if that's okay and people want to see it?

I would love to see this Stocky if you post the link when it's available please.

[stockportyears]

Re: Photos of boring things past

I would love to see this Stocky if you post the link when it's available please.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0071mrm

And here it is. It's the first item, really good stuff.

[Star Attraction]

Re: Photos of boring things past

Have you ever wished you'd taken more photos as a kid? And not just on holiday but of the everyday things like your bedroom, your friends, your garden, the shops, playing with Action Man or Evel Kinevel in the garden?

I do wish I had more photos from the past. My parents hardly ever took photos so I have very few and there is a huge gap of years where the camera broke and they didn't get another one. Infact they never got another one. The next one was mine!

It's so much easier to take pictures of 'boring' things now, not least because you don't have to buy films and get them developed. I've kept a diary for years and this year I have started putting one picture in every day, even if it is something really mundane. In years to come even the mundane things will bring back memories.

Don't forget, back in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s photography was an expensive hobby really. There was the cost of a film (24 or 36 exposures), and the additional cost of developing and printing. People had to use their cameras sparingly.

In the last few years, since "decent spec" digital cameras (5 MP upwards) became affordable, that people have finally moved away from film camers to digital cameras. Armed with a digital camera, computer and DVD writer (so you can store large numbers of snaps on DVD) you can now afford to "go berserk" taking hundreds of photos during a one-week holiday. The last couple years I took loads of photos of the SouthGate Shopping Centre in Bath as it was being built. I couldn't have afforded to have taken that many photos on a film camera. Last year I took loads of pictures of me and my family having fun at home Christmas Day (e.g. lunchtime), house decorations etc. No way would I have done all that in the days of film cameras.

When I was a kid, we didn't even have a camera, so we couldn't take photos of, for example, my 6th birthday party (when I had school friends to the house) in 1977, seaside trips, etc. My first camera was a Tudor Club 110 format camera as a Christmas present in 1982, and I took photos of various trips on that, e.g. my school trip to North Wales in 1983, family outings, but nothing like as much as my digital camera now.