MATTHEW BURNETTE

Staff Writer

Upon finding myself with an excess of photos that I had recently printed, I decided to make my way to a department store on a mission to procure myself a photo album to store them all in.

My first stop was in the aisle that has all of the various sizes and styles of picture frames, the thought being that picture frames can hold photos, and photo albums can also hold photos, therefore they probably are kept in the same section.

That theory was quickly disproven.

So, I headed over to the arts and crafts section thinking that scrapbooking is a craft that many people like to partake in, so they probably house them with the other crafts.

Flawless logic? No, the opposite. Not a photo album in sight.

“Huh,” I pondered to myself. “Maybe they’re over by the office supplies. Photo albums are books. Books are by office supplies. Makes sense.”

Nope.

The last possible place I could think of looking for one was over by the cameras in the electronics section, though I was incredibly skeptical about that idea, merely a last-ditch effort by a desperate guy in search of something.

Affirming my skepticism, there were no photo albums there either. What I found instead was a young employee tidying up the shelves. I asked her if she, by chance, could tell me where I might be able to find a photo album.

Her response was a puzzled look with a hint of disbelief. To be fair to her, the puzzled look wasn’t the result of not knowing what a photo album is. Too often, I think, the younger generations get a lot of flack for not knowing what things are, but in reality, why would they if they had never experienced them before?

Instead, her response seemed to stem from a confusion as to why I would be asking for such a thing.

“Oh, we haven’t carried those in-store in a long time. You’re the first person in a while that’s even asked about them.”

The reason that I was looking for a photo album in the first place was because I had recently shared a conversation with someone where I had lamented, “Man, nobody prints their photos anymore.”

Most of the time, I, as most people are, am content with just having digital copies of any pictures that I take, whether with my phone or my camera, one of the better conveniences developed over the last quarter of a century.

But as with any advancement that adds convenience to our lives, it also takes something away.

I have many fond memories of sitting at a relative’s house flipping through their photo albums. Oftentimes, I would have to practically beg to convince them to retrieve them from the various places that they had them stored.

I’d spend hours listening to the plastic crackle as I flipped through the pages. It was the closest thing to meeting people that I never actually got to and experience things that I wasn’t yet around for.

“Who’s that? What was going on here? Who took this one? Whoa, I never knew this happened” were all questions and thoughts that seemed to pour out on a rotation as I made my way from cover to cover.

Now, admittedly, I understand that the same thing can be done on a device like a phone or tablet. I’m not quite that out of touch, but it just feels different. It’s clunkier and less communal.

Gathering around the ol’ iPad to look at old photos just doesn’t seem right. Plus, you don’t have to worry about someone accidentally swiping forward with a photo album.

There’s also the question of the sustainability of technology. I’m not one of those people that fears a mass outage of all computers or a dark age where all technology is destroyed.

However, I do know that the last time I purchased a new television I had to buy an adapter for all of my old systems that required red and yellow A/V plugins. There have also been occurrences where I’ve upgraded phones and didn’t realize until later that my pictures didn’t save right in external places and were lost forever.

As technology advances, is our old stuff going to hold up? Will we have access to the same systems that we do now in 100 years?

Granted, printed photos have their downsides too. Improper preservation can lead to deterioration over time, but the fact that we have printed photos from the Civil War and even earlier gives me some confidence.

I left the department store that day feeling a little disheartened that the move from printed photos seems to be barreling along. But I found myself feeling determined to make a point of not letting myself take part.

Even if they have to be stored haphazardly in a shoe box at the back of the closet because there’s no longer nice, fancy books to place them all in, I’m determined to leave behind a vast collection of photos for my future descendants to thumb through and ask questions about.

Hopefully they’ll find the same joy from mine that I did from others.