I don’t know about you but I have a very Swiss cheese like memory. I can watch a movie or read a book and a few hours later I’ll most probably struggle to tell you much about it. However, tell me some irrelevant fact about something of no interest to man or beast and I’ll more than likely be able to tell you about it in 20 years time…go figure!
No doubt some mumbo-jumbo therapist would tell me there is a hidden reason for me forgetting the plot of a movie I watched 2 hours previously, I prefer to stick to my own theory that it was most probably crap although in saying that, some films I’ve really enjoyed I’ve struggled to recollect. Quite often I’ve gotten three quarters of the way through a film only to realise I’ve seen it before, sometimes I can make it right to the end before realising it and I’m sure sometimes I’ve never even noticed.
Photographs are the same. I recently had a bit of a clear out and found a couple of shoe boxes filled with photographs from the early 80’s to around 2005. There were a fair few of myself but by and large the majority were of places or other people. People I no longer remember and places that I don’t recognise; I seemed to have a fixation with trees at some point but where these trees were located is a mystery. I made the decision to put the lot into the bin but of course then felt that I should keep some of them, why I don’t know. A few days later Tamsin asked on Twitter if anyone had any old photographs as she needed some for a project she was doing. I seized the opportunity and sent them off to her leaving me with a guilt free conscience and a space where 2 shoe boxes used to occupy in the cupboard under the stairs.
I suppose that is one of the advantages of the digital age, you can quickly upload your photos to your computer or online repository and tag them with dates, locations and names of people. Of course in saying that I have folders on my hard drive of photos that, you guessed it, are filled with people and places I have no recollection of and despite having the date to work back to, I’m still none the wiser. Perhaps that’s why I don’t take very many photographs?
I really should remedy that as I have not one but two digital cameras and a Flickr profile crying out to be used, if I remember I’ll put all three to use!
