Digital scrapbooking is something I really like to do. In recent months I have been scanning in all our old black & white pictures and, with the help of Adobe Photoshop Elements, it is my intention to display them with as much info (journalling) as I can and save them for future generations.
It always makes me feel sad when I go into an antiques/second hand shop and look through the boxes of old photos that somebody gave away. Probably because nobody knew who it was in the pictures so why keep them? I don't want that to happen in my family so I'm doing my bit to record as many names and places as I can. I'm doing it with photos I take today as well as those from yesterday.
I found this poem one day and it says what I feel.
Treasures in a Box
Come, look with me inside this drawer,
In this box I've often seen,
At the pictures, black and white,
Faces proud, still, serene.
I wish I knew the people;
These strangers in the box,
Their names and all their memories
Are lost among my socks.
I wonder what their lives were like.
How did they spend their days?
What about their special times?
I'll never know their ways.
If only someone had taken time
To tell who, what, where, when.
These faces of my heritage
Would come to life again.
Could this become the fate
Of the pictures we take today?
The faces and the memories
Someday to be tossed away?
Make time to save your pictures,
Seize the opportunity when it knocks,
Or someday you and yours could be
The strangers in the box.
