November Thankfulness - Day 8.....Say Cheese!

Today I took 672 puppy pictures.  That's right. You read this correctly - 672 pictures.  It took almost 3 hours to get all the photos done.  I have promised that my new updated puppy pictures would be done today and so I took the task to heart.  I am still working on my website and probably will be at it for at least another hour or so.  Mr. Yesteryear Acres suggested that I finish it tomorrow, but a promise is a promise and so I will stay up until my website is completely updated with all brand new shiny happy pictures of our puppies. I have 4 new pages and tons of new pictures.  My website hosting company is being less than friendly this evening and my website program has crashed a total of 6 times so far.  I thought I would take a break and write my blog before rebooting my program for the 7th time this evening. I always remember to save my work after every picture that I import, but it is still a giant pain to reload all the pages and restart the software.  I have to go through all the folders on my computer and set everything up from scratch each time it crashes. That alone takes about 5-6 minutes plus it takes a good 2-3 minutes per picture upload. I can not have a single other program running at the same time or else the website program will crash with every upload.  It is really frustrating because I would at least like to listen to music or answer emails in between each upload but I have to sit and watch the little hour glass go around and around while each picture uploads. Even with all of the "fun" that goes into updating my website, I still find myself incredibly grateful for the digital age.  When we first started raising labrador retriever puppies many many years ago, we had a little camera that used REAL film.  We could only take 36 pictures at a time. Then I would have to drive the film all the way to the photobug processing center, wait a week for photobug to develop all my pictures, pick my envelope of precious pictures up, drive home, eagerly open my 36 photos only to find that I am a most excellent photographer of tails and ears.  I usually ended up with only one or two really decent pictures. It was always a big disappointment.  Now that I have an awesome camera with almost no shutter lag, I can snap picture after picture.  I can easily take 20-30 pictures of each puppy and then compile all my favorite shots and select the very very best ones for the website. It is rather amazing.  Digital pictures give us instant satisfaction.  We know right away whether we got that very important picture.  We know immediately if we have a photo of a memory that will last forever.  We can share our photos with friends that same day.  We can post them on websites, email them, text them - all with just one click of the send button.  It is easy to take pictures of silly every day events.  You don't have to worry about wasting your film.  Anything is up for grabs and if you take enough pictures, you might find that all the little silly, seemingly insignificant moments of your life weave together the most amazing tapestry of photo memories. So click away.  Don't wait for special occasions to take out your camera. Take pictures at dinner. Take pictures in the morning, in the afternoon and at night.  Take pictures on a plain and boring Wednesday.  You might be surprised by what you might find while looking through your camera lens.  You never know when someone might be lurking behind a tortilla waiting to make your day.

So thank you dear digital camera.  You make the scrapbook of our lives memorable and fun. Thank you for making all my treasured memories so easy to capture and save forever. Say Cheese!