Worthless when new, Valuable today, Priceless tomorrow...

[ken_kartes]

Time passes too quickly when raising children, capturing the moments is priceless, well done.

[sw12dz]

Beautiful post Doug. It brings tears to my eyes. My youngest is 28 and a policeman. Since when did they start making kids police officers? Gene's right about the time warp!

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

Kids grow up fast. I'm seeing time lapse photos of my own two boys as I scan through my archive. I'm so glad that I often had a camera at hand!

[User_503771]

My own daughter, now 26, sometimes glances askew at me when she sees the random small toys scattered around my place.

 

Ahhh, the things we learn from our children!

 

Great shots, Doug.

[rustys pics]

Wow Doug, happy belated birthday then!

[Rob_the_waste]

Awesome post Doug. I'm not sure that it's just life that goes in circles. I've been running in circles for years. I'm still trying to straighten out.

[tony_lockerbie]

<p>Great to see, priceless indeed. I have photographed my kids continuosly over the years.....still doing it! Getting them to pose gets harder, just keep perservering.</p>

<p>Tony</p>

[sexgun]

<p>Doug, no surprise at all that family snapshots are the only things people really care to find when they search through the rubble of their houses the day after a hurricane has flattened their town. Everything else can be replaced at Home Depot or Target.</p>

[jon_b.1]

Great Presentation! My son is 7 and gets pretty annoyed with me snapping away at him...I always tell him he will thank me someday.

[weezul]

<p>This is all that photography is about for me. Well, almost all, collecting old junk goes as the 2nd best reason for it all!! ;-)</p>

[silverscape]

<p>Great pictures, Doug!  My dad has always been shutter happy.  He was never really that much into pho tography, but he always did like to take a million pictures.  It used to annoy the heck out of me when I was a kid.  Your son was a lot more cooperative than I was!  But now I can understand things from the other  ;perspective.  Even though it annoyed me when I was a kid, I'm very grateful that my dad did take all tho se pictures.  It seems so trivial, just taking a picture, and you might be annoyed with it when you're a kid.   But years later, when you can see a moment in time forever captured in a photography, you appreci ate it more.    <br /><br />BUT like I said, I used to hate getting my picture taken whe n I was a kid.  (How ironic when you think about how now I'm a member on a photography website).  I've always been a major railroad buff.  My dad used to take me to a railway museum near where we live almost every weekend.  They had a huge collection, and on weekends they also ran a train and electric trolleys (re stored Pacific Electric Railway and Los Angeles Railway cars) on a loop that went around the museum grounds.  My dad was taking pictures again and driving me crazy.  I just wanted to get on the trolley.  I actually remember this.  I was walking out to the trolley and he wanted me to stop to take my picture.   I just said "fine!" stopped and turned around so he could get a snapshot of me.<br /><br />LOL...and here we go.   This is me in 1992.  I was about 13 or 14.  Your son is a lot more tolerant and cooperative than I ever was.  There are a lot better pictures of me.  I wasn't always a brat like this.  But I just re member when my dad to ok this picture.  I couldn't tell you anything about what kind of camera or film it was (other than 35mm). <br>

<a href="http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/Chris_OERM_1992_small.jpg">http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f86/gatewaycityca/Chris_OERM_1992_small.jpg</a><br /><br />Okay, is anyone else getting an error message if you try to click on the button to edit HTML code, or insert a picture?  I keep getting a window showing error "404" and "not found."  Weird.  I think there are still some bugs with the new editor.<br>

 </p>

[john carter]

<p>Doug, those are pricless, a great story with photos.</p>

[doug grosjean]

<p>Thanks all for the kind words.</p>

<p>Chris, cool pic and perspective.  I came from the other end of the scale - we didn't have any photogs in my family as a kid, so the pics we have are usually taken by relatives, and are sporadic.  I always thought it was great to get my pic taken, though I rarely saw the result.</p>

[silverscape]

<p>Well, Doug my dad took a million pictures and drove me crazy when I was a kid. I'm grateful for that now though. In fact, my mom was sorting through some old photos and I recently found a picture my dad took of me and a friend in 1992. My friend moved to Florida that summer, and that that picture was taken on the last day I ever saw him. He moved the next day. But it brought back a lot of memories, and I actually ended up finding my friend on MySpace. I hadn't talked to him in so many years!<br>

My dad has really mellowed out with taking pictures now. He's not as shutter-happy as he used to be. But now that I think about it, that's not necessarily a good thing because I probably don't take as many pictures as I should either. We'll take a few snapshots here and there on Christmas and on birthdays. But that's about it. I'm single, I don't have my own family yet (maybe someday)...but sometimes I think I should be taking more pictures with my parents and when I'm out with my friends. I take a lot of landscape photos with film since I got interested in photography, but sometimes I think I should be taking more snapshots with my friends too. There were a lot of fun times where sometimes I wish I had a camera with me. </p>

[doug grosjean]

<p>Hiya Chris,</p>

<p>Here's another angle to the parent-child camera interaction, but from my g/f's perspective.</p>

<p>She's older than me, and when I wanted to check out MF she pulled a Ciro-Flex TLR out of a closet and explained that her dad used it to photograph her. We checked out the rough age of the camera, and it was a Delaware-OH built model, so we figure about the time she was a little girl. She remembers him shooting her with the Ciro-Flex and an Ising Pucky, she remembers he had a darkroom in the basement (he died in 1981, so we never met). I use a timer of his for my contact printing now.<br>

When she grew up and moved out, the camera was shelved and not used anymore.</p>

<p>So she has a great record of her childhood, and her father was a very good photog.... but he dropped the skills when she reached adulthood.</p>

<p>So you and your dad are both pretty much on the same path many of us are.</p>

[ron_ruble]

<p>Hi Doug,<br>

There were some EXCELLENT photos in there - and I fully agree with the sentiment expressed by sooo many here that the old fully manual SLR's were by far the best for taking great pictures. BTW - my favorite is the one of your son in front of the fireplace.<br>

I was a school yearbook/newspaper photographer in high school - even sold a few to the local newspaper - and purchased a Petri FT new back in 1975 as I began my photography experience. Always LOVED that camera, was able to do some wonderful things by altering and stretching the manual settings of the camera - but unfortunately left it out in the car on New Years Eve of 1978 for no more than 2 hrs in roughly zero degree temps in Ohio. The Petri had a bit of a habit of sometimes being hard to forward the first couple of frames of a roll of film - so I thought nothing of it when I had to apply a little extra force to take the second pic after bringing the camera back in to the party that night. Unfortunately, in this particular instance the resistance was due to the fact that the mechanics of the film forward had frozen in the cold - and I ripped both of the 1", hand made, silk shutter screens in the camera when I forced the film to forward. Even back in 1978, the repair for my screw up was going to run well in excess of $200 (nearly what I had paid for the camera) - so that was the end of my Petri FT. I had kept the damaged body and all my lenses all these years, and am thrilled to report that I just found the identical camera on EBAY in brand new condition for a total of about $40 including shipping ;-) Just shooting my first roll with this one, but am SO looking forward to recreating the days of my youth using what was my 1st real camera - after the dreaded 110 Instamatics we all had as kids back then. Wish me luck !! And if anyone knows where I can find the battery for this camera, please contact me at ron_ruble@yahoo.com.</p>