By Rick Houser-
There is a saying that a “picture is worth a thousand words”. That could possibly be the truest statement ever. From earliest times man has worked at capturing how a person looked so that others could see them when that person wasn’t around or after that person passed away. A picture keepsake has always been a desire for all of us in some form or another.
In the 1800’s inventors worked on a way to create images of people and places through a system they called photography. The device that was invented was called a camera. In the beginning it took pictures but they looked more like a negative and was formed by placing the image on glass. This didn’t last too long and was very expensive, so few people could afford to get a picture made. However, like many other inventions, so was the camera. It evolved to where a picture could be transferred on to metal and in greater detail but only in black and white. These were referred to as tin types. Around the time of the Civil War the camera improved to where the image transferred on to paper and became very sought after.
I have always been very interested in pictures and especially pictures of family and friends. As a young boy, I would sometimes stay at my Grandma Houser’s house and she would bring out big family albums and some were all tin type photos and then she had the newer pictures that were mounted on a cardboard-like material. These were my ancestors but one thing rang true in all of these pictures. Each person was all dressed up in their best clothes and posed very stiff. That was because pictures could only be taken in a studio and since the camera was still a new thing a person couldn’t move or the picture wouldn’t be any good. As interesting and unusual as they were, I wanted to look at the newer photos.
Grandma would produce a group of photos that were from the early 1900’s and even though still in black and white, they were of people that appeared to be able to move compared to the earliest ones. Since I’m not a specialist in this field, I will say that sometime in the early 1900’s photography began to advance quickly. As for today, taking a picture is as easy as pushing a button.
As a little boy we had a camera that was a black box and shaped in rectangular form. It never dawned on me until recently that the only photos that were taken by that box camera were outdoor photos. You see the camera didn’t come with a flash so that photos couldn’t be taken inside. Somewhere around 1960 we got a camera that came with a flash attachment and flash bulbs and when they went off they were so bright that most everyone around was temporarily blinded.
Once the camera became so easy to use that anyone could do it and they could be purchased for a reasonable price, taking pictures became a necessity. We just had to take a photo of whatever and whoever and wherever for posterity. It has now become a must to take pictures at every event.
. My wife is a picture taking person if there ever was one. I give her a hard time about all of those pictures she took but the truth is I like to look through them from time to time to just look and say to myself, “Oh my did so and so look so young or oh boy, I sure looked thin back then.”
The most recent change in photography is that now pictures are taken with cell phones. This has reduced the cost of pictures to zero and the number of photos has increased to unlimited. With this great advancement comes a down side. The majority of what was photographed has been deleted. Now in the case of my wife she has found a place where she somehow can send a hundred pictures from her phone and this place for a couple of bucks prints them and places them in a booklet form and she has them for posterity.
Since I am the only member of my immediate family still living I like to take the stroll down the old memory lane so I can look at what was one more time. I will take those photos and photo books and look at my family all grown up and in some cases still growing and just sit and look at that moment when the picture was taken and relive it one more time. Just as certain as I am that I enjoy my photos, I have to feel that before the camera the only way to preserve family memories was to have a painting done. I’m sure that members of that family took time to look at the person who was caught in a moment of time and even if it was in paint they had to look at it and think, “Boy have they changed.”
Recently I opened a shoe box and found a mountain of 35mm slide pictures. It seemed to be the thing to take your pictures and have them developed this way and the only way to see them was to have a projector and a screen to show them on. My folks took pictures this way from 1964 until about 1974. Since those were my years in high school, early adulthood, and early marriage I was unable to get to reflect on them. So I kind of felt robbed. Then I found a place that will take the photo out of the slide and put it on photograph paper so I now have a picture I can hold in my hands. It was like opening a time capsule.
From painting to a camera to a cell phone, man has always been fascinated with a visual way of looking back at who we were and where we came from. There is a place out there called ancestry.com that will tell you all about your past. Thing is I have chosen to take the path of photos.com. I can go way back before the time of my arrival and see people I never knew. I also can look back at my grandparents and cousins and neighbors that have passed away and there they are again.
Right there in front of me is the world as I saw it growing up and best of all I can pick up the most recent pictures and see my grandchildren and my children and my wife all smiling. Yes with the click of the shutter the camera took a moment from time and I have it to look at forever.
Yes, take a picture as it will last longer.
