How old does a photo need to be?

jonbeeza

jonbeeza

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A mate of mine sent me a photo to my phone the other day, it was a photo of me holding his son as a baby. The photo was from about thirty years ago. The photo was small on my phone screen, and the photo was badly composed with very poor light, and also poor image quality. But non of that mattered when I saw the photo, as the photo gave me a lovely feeling, of a time and a place that I had long forgotten about.

As I was looking at the photo, it gave me a happy and emotional feeling. It reminded me of a happy and special time in my life, when I lived with my mate and his family.

I do have more recent photos of me and my mate with his family, and other recent stuff with my family. But non of the recent stuff seems to give me the same sort of emotion.
Maybe a photo has to have a certain amount of time to pass, to evoke such emotional memories.

Possibly fifteen or twenty years maybe?
 
I don't think there is a particular age, Jon, but agree there are emotional ties with some photos, irrespective of the quality of the shot.

Oddly enough we were weeding out some old 35mm slides yesterday. We don't have a slide projector so viewing them wasn't easy but, among the dross, there were quite a few that will be kept.

Dave
 
The photo was taken in living/dining room, and the kitchen can be seen in the background, through a big serving hatch. I am glad the photo was not taken with a wide aperture thus de focusing the background, as I find it amazing looking at all the old cooking utensils. Glad photoshop was not used, to clone all the stuff in the background out. :)
 
I have to agree, old photographs do bring back some lovely memories.
I was looking at an oldie from 1974 when I was an apprentice engineer.
Myself and two mates standing next to my first Land Rover, young, full head of hair, money in my pocket, couldn’t give a f##k, lovely ;)
 
Norkie said:
I have to agree, old photographs do bring back some lovely memories.
I was looking at an oldie from 1974 when I was an apprentice engineer.
Myself and two mates standing next to my first Land Rover, young, full head of hair, money in my pocket, couldn’t give a f##k, lovely ;)
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My oldest family photos that I have got, give me the lovely feel when viewing them, they were taken by my mother.
I don't think I have very old photos that I have taken, can't recall the oldest photo I have, most are probably about ten to fifteen years old possibly.
 
jonbeeza said:
A mate of mine sent me a photo to my phone the other day, it was a photo of me holding his son as a baby. The photo was from about thirty years ago. The photo was small on my phone screen, and the photo was badly composed with very poor light, and also poor image quality. But non of that mattered when I saw the photo, as the photo gave me a lovely feeling, of a time and a place that I had long forgotten about.

As I was looking at the photo, it gave me a happy and emotional feeling. It reminded me of a happy and special time in my life, when I lived with my mate and his family.

I do have more recent photos of me and my mate with his family, and other recent stuff with my family. But non of the recent stuff seems to give me the same sort of emotion.
Maybe a photo has to have a certain amount of time to pass, to evoke such emotional memories.

Possibly fifteen or twenty years maybe?
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No. If your photography is just for you and you're not a professional, it doesn't matter if it was yesterday, yesteryear or the year dot, each one is a unique memory.
 
Gerods said:
No. If your photography is just for you and you're not a professional, it doesn't matter if it was yesterday, yesteryear or the year dot, each one is a unique memory.
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My latest images do not give me the same feeling, even an image from someone else does not give that same feeling, if it is a new recent image.
 
My boy is 5 years old and when I see photo of him as a baby it makes me melt.
So maybe there no need for a long time to have passed for soemthing to have changed and no be the same anymore.
Nostalgia
 
Lemaildetom said:
My boy is 5 years old and when I see photo of him as a baby it makes me melt.
So maybe there no need for a long time to have passed for soemthing to have changed and no be the same anymore.
Nostalgia
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I love looking at old photos, especially if they mean something to me. :)
 
mstphoto said:
Aye, nostalgia ain't what it used to be :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

Amazing how not only a photograph but a smell or a sound can stir the memories
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Absolutely. It's smell with me, far more than sight and sound. Where I used to live there was a farm with a diesel engine to power the milking machinery, it had a very distinctive smell. Oddly the ice cream van had the same smell... I can bring the smell to mind now, even though it must be 55 years since I last experienced it.
 
Graham W said:
Absolutely. It's smell with me, far more than sight and sound. Where I used to live there was a farm with a diesel engine to power the milking machinery, it had a very distinctive smell. Oddly the ice cream van had the same smell... I can bring the smell to mind now, even though it must be 55 years since I last experienced it.
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Have to admit, I too liked the Diesel smell of an ice cream van. :)
 
When mum passed away three years ago I inherited all of the family photos - boxes of them. Looking through them I have had many pangs of nostalgia seeing relatives who have also passed on and I had completely forgotten about. It is a long-term project of mine to digitise them all.
 
Bristolian said:
When mum passed away three years ago I inherited all of the family photos - boxes of them. Looking through them I have had many pangs of nostalgia seeing relatives who have also passed on and I had completely forgotten about. It is a long-term project of mine to digitise them all.
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I would love to see our photos that my mother took of us, as very small children. My brother took the whole family photos, when my mum passed away. I have been asking him for years, if I could see them again, but I never get much response from him. :(
 
My intention is to create a site where any family member can log in and view or download images and eventually upload new ones in the hope that it will help to keep the family interested in our history. There appears to be a trend of dementia in the family so maybe the images will also be useful in triggering memories for sufferers too.

At the moment I am storing images on my Synology NAS and sharing the albums with family members. It is likely that the NAS will run out of storage space before too long and I will have to think of another sharing method but for now it is working okay with about 30 family members on the list of people able to access the drive.
 
Bristolian said:
My intention is to create a site where any family member can log in and view or download images and eventually upload new ones in the hope that it will help to keep the family interested in our history. There appears to be a trend of dementia in the family so maybe the images will also be useful in triggering memories for sufferers too.

At the moment I am storing images on my Synology NAS and sharing the albums with family members. It is likely that the NAS will run out of storage space before too long and I will have to think of another sharing method but for now it is working okay with about 30 family members on the list of people able to access the drive.
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Sounds like a really good idea.

I would have loved to have done something like that, but my brothers and sisters would not be interested in helping with photos that they have. :(
 
I was lucky. I only have an older sister who lives in the Netherlands and who wasn't interested in shipping the boxes back home so I grabbed them with open arms. Oddly though, she has provided me with additional photos since then, some of which were portraits of family members taken by our father who was a professional photographer.

Father died when I was very young and I don't have any first hand memories of him but seeing his work, which includes coloured black and white printes, I feel I know him a little. I grew up playing with his TLR cameras - if only I had them now.
 
jonbeeza said:
I would love to see our photos that my mother took of us, as very small children. My brother took the whole family photos, when my mum passed away. I have been asking him for years, if I could see them again, but I never get much response from him. :(
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Similar scenario here.
My sister must have hundreds.
We never see them, but every now and again one surfaces....
 
jonbeeza said:
My latest images do not give me the same feeling, even an image from someone else does not give that same feeling, if it is a new recent image.
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This could age-related. When you get to my age, every memory is precious. Don't know how I'll manage next year at 29.
 
My very first camera was free with chocolate biscuit wrappers (Nikon I think :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: )
I was 4 or 5 - almost 60 years ago!!
I think my Mum (92) still has the photos.
I remember taking a photo of an E Type Jag at Dyce Airport.
Still remember it like it was yesterday.
 
jonbeeza said:
I would love to see our photos that my mother took of us, as very small children. My brother took the whole family photos, when my mum passed away. I have been asking him for years, if I could see them again, but I never get much response from him. :(
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I'm lucky as all the photos from the 1960s when growing up in Australia are at my Mums in a big album, I must bring them back next time I'm over as I already have old slides that I plan to photograph to put in the album.
 
Annet said:
I don't think age means a lot, to me it's more about certain feelings you have about this moment and the memories connected to it. The photo can be either two or ten years old, it doesn't really matter. Of course, old photos from my childhood give me some nostalgic feeling but that's different. And sometimes old pictures make me just sigh heavily, when I see how much time and effort it's going to take to restore them in Photoglory to re-print again :ROFLMAO:
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I can look at a photo I took last year, but because nothing may have changed, there will be not much of an impact for me.
But if something has changed since, such as a family member or a friend, or even a pet passing away, the photo will have an impact on me.

But viewing an old photo of about thirty years ago, has more of an impact on me. It is because so much will have changed, and it is recalling how things were, or even an event maybe.
 
jonbeeza said:
I can look at a photo I took last year, but because nothing may have changed, there will be not much of an impact for me.
But if something has changed since, such as a family member or a friend, or even a pet passing away, the photo will have an impact on me.
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My bold is the main reason for me.
 
My favourite ever photo was taken the day our son was born. Mum (looking knackered) is in the hospital bed holding him whilst his 4 year old sister is seeing and holding him for the first time and beaming with joy.
Taken in colour with an Olympus trip, 35 years ago.
 
Hope you don't mind but this photo was about 62 as in 63 I remember Mum came out and the said in the garden JFK had been shot, I'm the baby and only me and Mum are still here. It was an old slide that I took an image of and have many more to do before they are ruined.

Family by Dave, on Flickr
 
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Fuji Dave said:
My bold is the main reason for me.
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I used to take our lovely staffy out on long walks, sometimes four times a day, and she loved it. I took photos of her everyday, for twelve years. I have all the photos filed away, by month and year. I still love looking at photos of her, it reminds me of all the fun we had together on our lovely walks. I would take the tripod and set the timer, and pose alongside her. It takes me back to a lovely happy, and pleasurable moment in my life.
 
Fuji Dave said:
Hope you don't mind but this photo was about 62 as in 63 I remember Mum came out and the said in the garden JFK had been shot, I'm the baby and only me and Mum are still here. It was an old slide that I took an image of and have many more to do before they are ruined.

Family by Dave, on Flickr
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Great photo, I like the way you are looking so intently. (y)
 
woof woof said:
Maybe I'm just sentimental and emotional but the pictures could have been taken 10 minutes ago for me.
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Yes but the moment would still be current, surely a certain amount of time needs to pass, for a photo to have that certain feeling. Unless something drastic changed a few minutes after taking a photo.
 
One of the great regrets I have now is that I didn't take enough photos of people years ago instead of the same landscapes that we all in our group took. The landscapes still mostly there but some of my friends aren't and being a long-time keep snapper (yes snapper) all the photos I'm ever asked for now are those with people in. So landscapes are great (I've got enough of them) but for memories there's nothing like people.
 
Not family related... But in keeping with what the OP said about quality... I have OLD pictures on my website that i took with a bridge camera at sporting events.. these are embarresingly bad pictures... BUT! they are the only ones ataken or others are lost.. and I do get people buying them off my website from 15 years or more... what has worked out well is shooting junior football say u10s and now they are grown ups.. some wouldnt have know the pics are there so I regularly post ON THIS DAY to my FB and twitter and it generates sales from grown ups of themselves playing as kids....So for me even my worse most embarresingly poor pictures still sell :)
 
I recently asked my mother why there are so few pictures of her as a young girl, my father as a boy too. She said that cameras were expensive and getting your picture taken was too. She said back then most people only had their wedding photos or maybe a class picture from school.

I think the oldest picture I've seen of her is a school photograph, the oldest of my dad are those as a young man in his navy uniform in the 40's. I've never seen a picture of him as a boy.

Imagine photographs being too expensive. We're spoilt these days :D
 
velocette said:
One of the great regrets I have now is that I didn't take enough photos of people years ago instead of the same landscapes that we all in our group took. The landscapes still mostly there but some of my friends aren't and being a long-time keep snapper (yes snapper) all the photos I'm ever asked for now are those with people in. So landscapes are great (I've got enough of them) but for memories there's nothing like people.
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I wish I had of taken more photos of the 80s, there was a lot happening then, maybe I was too busy living it, rather than documenting it.
 
I wish I'd taken more pictures during the 60's when I used to visit the Kings Road regularly but had other things on my mind and it was just 'normal' because we were living it. If it moved photograph it. If it doesn't you can always come back later .
 
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