It used to be you could find a box of photos or keepsakes that you inherited to look back on how things were or when you were a kid. Now, most of that is stored on phones, and most parents probably don’t think to share or save them in a way to be passed down in the future.
I mean in 2 or 3 generations noone is going to care about your personal photos anyway. Realistically probably not even that long. How many times have you sat down to look at photos of your parents or grandparents as anything more than a passing curiosity? People don’t even look at their own pictures. My sister just got married and her wedding package comes with like 1600 photos and a 2 hour video. Aside from when they first get them back I’d be willing to bet they never look back at 99% of those.
I look back at photos weekly, if you’re not looking back at them then stop taking them.
I learnt this after spending an entire day at a museum and taking loads of pictures. Then realised I am never going to look at any of these. So I stopped doing it. Why look at life through my phone when it is in front of me?
Conversely, I went to a place where my partner and I could hang out with, feed, pet, and snuggle heaps of animals we had never seen up close in real life—kangaroos, capybaras, porcupines (I was so scared but they were SOOOO sweet and loving!), baby binturong (we both cried, they climbed allll over us, my favorites easily), various reptiles, and way more. I was definitely in the moment but I did take oodles of photographs and videos. I look at them alllll the time. I am so happy I have photos and videos of that experience, I would regret so much if I didn’t!
How much time do you spend looking through them? Do you go through your entire collection, even the oldest ones regularly? Besides which, I agree that personal photos are valuable to the person, but unless something really fucking crazy happens in your life, nobody else really cares about your photos. Your kids might, your grandkids probably won’t, and your great grandkids probably won’t. And anyone further removed than that definitely wont. The post wasn’t about taking pictures, it’s about wanting to save them for ever
For the most part, iOS does a fantastic job of bringing up old photos I haven’t seen in a long time just on my Home Screen. I can click in, look at a few, think about those times, and then jump to the next thing I was doing. So some weeks it’s looking every day or two while other weeks less.
I agree that most people probably won’t ever look at their grandparents photos, but maybe that’s because they weren’t good photos? Like someone else said, context is important so marking things that happened makes them more valuable.