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Odds & Ends
Fading Images
By Jim Plunkett

Facing reality has never been one of my outstanding virtues. This came to light once again as I started cleaning closets and storerooms, filled with the honest intention of making room for more contemporary junk.

Probably one of the most common collector's items are photos or snapshots. If I could have a penny for every camera I have bought, each photo I have taken, and every roll of film I have developed over the years, I would probably be part owner of Eastman Kodak. From the simple box camera my mother cherished, to the complicated 16mm movie camera my father insisted on hauling around on our yearly vacations, there was a never-ending lust for upgrading to the latest technology.

Today I find myself with boxes of family pictures and snapshots taken in college, of the kids growing up, the birthday parties, trips to Disney, and tons of color transparencies that were once occasionally shown during family gatherings. When you combine this fabulous collection of images that no one is really interested in seeing with the humidity factor of Lima and the resulting deterioration, you finally realize that you are sitting on an ancient collection that not even your kids want anything to do with.

As if that weren't enough, I started recording very interesting programs on the Sunday morning news involving all kinds of things, thinking that someday I would sit down and review them. It never happened. The tape is now so infested with mildew, that I would be afraid to contaminate the heads on my VCR. As to VCRs and tape recorders, they are now practically obsolete, and if you are not into DVD & MP3, you are out of it.

Of course you can always find these young guys around town who advertise converting your historical pictures, your old 8mm movies of your wedding and anniversaries, your video tapes, etc. to modern format. But have you ever stopped to think when you will ever see it or who really wants to sit down with you more than once, if that, to share it with you?

Despite all the obvious waste of time and energy and the investment in high tech equipment, I find myself obsessed with capturing that famous moment in the life of friends and relatives that only I and a privileged few will ever get to see before it ends up on the shelf and the storeroom waiting for the mildew. Luckily someone invented the computer with a hard disk. Now using digital format, I can take pictures with my cell phone when I am not busy talking, download them to my hard disk, apply the latest software to enhance faces and figures that usually need retouching, condense it, add music and text, and even forward it via the Internet to millions of disinterested people that could give a damn about what I have recorded.

Nevertheless, it's been a wonderful hobby over all these years. I feel like a stockholder in Eastman Kodak and Sony without holding shares. Thousands of babies and babes have posed for me here and abroad, most of whom never did get a chance to see themselves. I have learned how to operate everything from a simple box camera to a sophisticated Pentium IV computer as well as my new camera-incorporated cell phone, and I can envisage myself spending the idle moments of my old age sorting through digital chips on my computer to see what I am going to throw out next to make more room for future shots.

Why my mother never encouraged me to follow her example of collecting stamps is beyond me. I could have been a millionaire by now!