Memories Via Apple

If you have an iPhone or IPad and take a lot of photos you probably get these reminders of old photos when your device makes you a random slide show on some theme, location or date. Sometimes these little shows are welcome. Today I had one based on this date in 2005. Carter and her classmates of first grade were in a musical show at school. I don’t remember the exact show, but I can still tell you the names of all the kids in the photos. That slide show was sweet and welcome.

Sometimes I feel like my iPad is taunting me by showing me beach photos from years past when it is 25° here now. Or showing me photos of trips to Italy where I have not been in a few years and wish I could visit right now.

What I really don’t like is when I get a photo reminder of people I can’t seem to place. Sometimes I take random photos of people in places I am visiting and the people are just part of the atmosphere. Carter got particularly mad at me on a trip to Barcelona when I took photos of random dogs without the dogs’ permissions. I promised Carter I was not going to exploit the dogs, but I digress.

The reason I get upset about these random photo memories is I think I should know all the photos in my library. Why I feel I should know 100’s of thousands of photos is just because I normally have a good photo memory.

If a random photo is displayed and I don’t recognize it I can look at the info on the photo, date and place and look at other photos taken just before and after it and then I usually can place it. What I have finally started to do is to delete these unimportant photos. It is helpful since space is ultimately limited, but also that if not tied to me in some way, they will be unimportant to others in my family when I am gone.

It would take me years to label all my photos. If I started doing that I would mostly likely delete most of mine as time to label would not be worth most photos. But then I come across a photo that is unimportant to me, but perhaps would be nice for the subject to have.

So from now on when something pops up, before I delete it I might send it to someone. I may not tell you I am deleting you and now you can be the holder of your own photo, but at least I won’t just get rid of it all together.

I wish I time to make photo books of all my important photos. Perhaps when I retire again. For now I will look at the random iPad memories that are sent to me.