There's a framed photo of Heather and me that's thirty years old now and been on the wall above my desk for the last fourteen. It was shot by Rod Ellmore in 1994 while our whole family was together in Auckland.

When I look at it I think:

“Didn’t we look cute thirty years ago? And I had hair! Remember how those Lockwood houses creaked? The bloody dog ruined that couch… Love the Indian parchment — still on the wall… What happened to those Churchill books? The printing is like new… Those shoes were great…”

In another thirty years our grandchildren will show it to their kids, and what they’ll say is, “Look! That’s your great grandparents.”

Except they won’t, because almost certainly the frame will be long gone. People move. Different walls. New memories and priorities.

But that won't matter — not to our family history and not to my ego. 😄

Because we have an album as well — with several photos from that shoot, not just the one on the wall.

And it will survive.

I'm very confident of that.

Why am I so confident?

Because it will be on this shelf with the others, and our grandkids will be able to open one of the older albums that you can see, and say to their kids, “Look! That’s your great-great-great grandparents.”

Frames are for NOW. Albums are for the FUTURE.

Framed family photos offer something that an album can't — daily enjoyment of the images. Albums offer a different value, if only because they hold far more photos. But on the day we take the frames down they come into their own. On that day and for decades afterwards.

We need them both.

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Yes, Rod's images are in the cloud too — we scanned the negs that he gave us when he retired.

Mind you, I had a hunt for them. There are 7,866 images in my photo app. I must get round to culling them one day — along with the old frames that we can’t bear to throw out but have nowhere to display :(

Cheers, Ian