I don’t remember photos as a big part of growing up. We had them of course – mostly of the family – but unlike today, where any moment of any day can be easily and instantly recorded, they were not part of the fabric of daily living.  

During the Winnipeg years we had a lot of small black-and-whites along with some great quality larger ones because my grandfather was a professional photographer and lived nearby. Dad also took many, and in colour by the time we reached Calgary in 1965. I was ten at the time… and sported this ultra-cool hair-do!

I got my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, when I was in high school. It used easy-to-load film cartridges and flash cubes that snapped into place on the top. You popped the cartridges in, took your photos, popped them out, and sent them to the lab for processing. I used that little camera for years, taking the usual myriad of teen and young-adult shots that seldom made it into the memento box – professional photographer I was not.

The Polaroid camera made its public debut around then but I felt that its instant pictures, while intriguing, were not of great quality and I never bothered saving up to buy one of my own.

From the time I first met hubby Larry, he has been interested in photography and instrumental in preserving our entire family life with zillions of high quality 35 mm shots. I often carried his various lenses and assisted with switching them up as required.

In those days (we’re talking the 1980s) there were two types of home photographers… those who filled album after album with prints to leaf through at their leisure but which took up scads of shelf space, and those who stored slides on carousels that took up less space but required more set-up to enjoy. We decided early on to continue with Larry’s preference for slides to be projected as huge images on our home screen. On many a quiet evening we’d all laugh our way through memories of home life and vacations.

I came to rely upon Larry’s photos and did not own a camera of my own. If I wanted something in particular, I’d use his. This routine changed however after a genealogy research trip to Scotland in 2005 when I found myself constantly pressuring Larry to take more shots, from more angles and from up close.

Digital 35 mm cameras had been on the scene since about 1990 but they remained very expensive. Instead I bought a digital Canon Power Shot when we got home. I took endless photos and learned how to work with them on the computer. My son used it for university research and now my 6-year-old granddaughter loves it for videos.

Soon after, Larry made the leap to digital and has never looked back. He spent months and months… and months… digitizing that lifetime of slides into his computer filing system – now an impressive record of times past.

As for myself, I moved on to… you got it… my phone. A day does not go by that I do not take a photo or two or three. Of anything I want. Whenever I want. At no cost to me. I can shuffle them around on my computer, print them myself, store them on the web, and send them to anyone. It’s wondrous.