Photographs and Memories

/ Richard R. Barron

We all cherish memories. Many of us have fairly accurate memories, while others struggle to keep dates and people and places organized in their heads.

Abby and I pose on the giant jackrabbit in Joseph City, Arizona in July 2003.
Abby and I pose on the giant jackrabbit in Joseph City, Arizona in July 2003.

I believe the very best way to preserve memories is to write down the events of your life. It can be in a journal or scrapbook, as text files on your computer (preferably then printed onto paper), or in some kind of personal web presence, like an online journal or blog, some of which, hopefully, can be marked “private.”

I also happen to think that if you let social media curate your memories, you are either dead inside, or are being played by global corporations. Think about it: social media has no idea what stirs you to tears, but it does know what you buy.

Abby holds her Nikon Coolpix 885 as she and I have a photo session in the late winter of 2004.
Abby holds her Nikon Coolpix 885 as she and I have a photo session in the late winter of 2004.

I thought about this as I was enjoying a different kind of memory visit: looking through computer folders of image files from some of those great times my friends and family had over the years.

I photograph and write about all our travels, both in my journal, and here on my web site. One I visited recently was a folder of only-lightly-edited images from the first vacation Abby and I took together in 2003, The High Road. (Click it.)

It was a great time for both of us, both as a couple and photographically.

As I searched these images, I found two instances of images I had passed over at the time, two of hers and two of mine,  that both looked like they would be interesting to stitch into panographs.

When Abby made pictures of Vermilion Cliffs in northern Arizona on U.S. 89a, she didn't realize that two images she made could be stitched into this beautiful panograph.
When Abby made pictures of Vermilion Cliffs in northern Arizona on U.S. 89a, she didn’t realize that two images she made could be stitched into this beautiful panograph.
Abby and I were driving from Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah to Page, Arizona. Dark had fallen on us as we made our wave through the winding U.S. 160 when we drove into a shaft of red light from the sun setting in Tsegi Canyon. We immediately drove through it into the dark again, but made a u-turn to make this image, a stitch of two frames from my Minolta Dimage 7i.
Abby and I were driving from Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah to Page, Arizona. Dark had fallen on us as we made our wave through the winding U.S. 160 when we drove into a shaft of red light from the sun setting in Tsegi Canyon. We immediately drove through it into the dark again, but made a u-turn to make this image, a stitch of two frames from my Minolta Dimage 7i.

Abby shot with the Nikon Coolpix 885, a tiny camera I bought two years earlier as a throw-in-a-travel bag camera. When we started dating, she adopted it, and it became hers. I shot with the Minolta Dimage 7i, which I still have to this day.

The Nikon Coolpix 885 was just the right size for Abby's slender hands. She made images with it for years until it finally died.
The Nikon Coolpix 885 was just the right size for Abby’s slender hands. She made images with it for years until it finally died.

Both cameras came from the start of the digital photography era, and though they have some significant technological limitations, we made some amazing images, and, most importantly, we made memories.

I love this humble camera, the Minolta DiMage 7i from 2002. I especially like its color rendition, and its gorgeous 14-point sunstars when shooting into the sun.
I love this humble camera, the Minolta DiMage 7i from 2002. I especially like its color rendition, and its gorgeous 14-point sunstars when shooting into the sun.