Legacy Value vs. Conversational Value For Your Photos

     Around 2003, a major insurance company, Allianz, commissioned "The American Legacy Study".   They wanted to know about the attitudes of the Baby Boom generation and the World War II generation regarding the transition of wealth from one generation to the next.   The shocker of this study was that money was NOT the primary concern or source of conflict within a family when a parent or grandparent dies.  It was the items of emotional value that were most likely to be of concern:  the photo album, the dining room table, the rocking chair.
  When a photograph has "legacy value", it has meaning that is passed from one generation to another.

     This picture adorns the cover of a coffee table book I made about my mother.  In the photo above she is in all her glory at a church coffee hour.  She was a ministers wife and she loved to cook and she was a marvelous cake decorator, as you can see.  She routinely had 8 or more guests for Sunday dinner or various family celebrations.  She loved color and arranging flowers. She made her own figure-flattering classic dresses.  She was a "Martha Stewart" before her time!  This photo captures all the things she loved to do--even if all I wrote was, "My mom was a Martha Stewart before her time!"

     This photo has more of what I would call "Conversational" value. It is simply a brief moment in life that is shared in my conversation with others.  I took it with my cellphone.  I posted it on Facebook. By itself, it is just a pretty picture of what I was doing one Saturday morning.

     I could also  add legacy value to it by writing about it "The beauty of a spiritual  retreat is that you are plucked out of daily life and all its distractions.  You are free to be in the present moment. I got up early and went for a walk in the woods.  The air was crisp.  The colors were glorious!  When I experience this beauty, I know that I am never alone."

Some photos are so packed with meaning, that it doesn't take much to add the legacy value of the written word to them.  Some photos are simply a part of the transient fabric of life.  They are part of our conversation but do not have legacy value until we write about them.  So when you are sorting through your photos and deciding which ones are the "Keepers"  or "The Best of the Best", look for the legacy value.  Is the photo just a passing moment,  or does it touch a responsive chord in your heart?  Is it worth writing a few sentences about? 




 

After the Tornado - "We found the Album!"

It happens every time there is a major natural disaster.  There's another news story about how one of the victims found their photos.  Their house may be gone.  All those earthly possessions that they paid money for are gone.

But they FOUND THE  PHOTO ALBUM!  You can see the smiles and happiness - despite all the destruction that surrounds them.  Family photos are clearly the most precious and irreplaceable things we own.

There was a day when only 12  or 24 photos came in a roll.  People carefully put them on the black pages of a photo album and with white ink, labelled them:  "Aunt Betty and Cousin Jane - June 1945".  We open those albums and we know about the lives of grand parents and great-grandparents. 

But today our photos are fast losing their value and their meaning because we have become a nation of photo-hoarders.  Here's what I mean:

Did you take more than 10 photos of your last family event with your digital camera?
Do you have boxes and boxes of duplicate photos you got in the 80's and 90's?
Are your photos being robbed of their color by the old magnetic film albums that were so handy a few decades ago?

Here's where the concept of hoarding comes in.  I happened to catch one of those reality-TV shows where an organization expert was coaching a lady who had hundreds of gifts that she had stuffed into a room but had never given to family members or friends.  "I can't throw any of them away" she said.  "They are too important!"


The expert said something really profound:  "My dear, if everything is important  ...then nothing is important."

Photo hoarding is really not anyone's fault.  It's just that the technology of photo-taking has changed so much in 30 years that we've all become photo-hoarders without realizing it.  Sure, you've got those photos stored in boxes or on your computer or on Facebook.  But 50 years from now will another generation know who is in those photos or what these photos mean to you?  Will your great-grandchildren share the meaning of your life-- or will your hundreds of photos just be dumped into another container and lost forever?

I believe that 10 photos that are printed and written about are worth thousands in a box or a hard drive. 

We have too many photos and not enough time.  This blog is devoted to finding the strategies and tools to restore meaning and the value to your pictures.