This is Your Life . . . in photographs!

By Ken Oxley on Jun 3, 09 07:23 PM

PERHAPS it's a generational thing. When I was in the full flush of youth, birthdays meant I could look forward to a new item of clothing, a record I'd been after (by which I mean a 12 inch lump of vinyl), or perhaps some toiletries (Brut, as advertised by boxer Henry "splash-it-all-about" Cooper, was especially popular).

Today, all kids want is money . . . and lots of it. Birthdays now signal the accumulation of varying amounts of readies from assorted relatives, to be stashed away or squandered as the recipient sees fit.

It's understandable, I guess. No more pretending to be thrilled about other people's dubious choices.

Forget the element of surprise . . . buying your own gifts means "satisfaction guaranteed".

So we bowed to pressure for our son's 21st (well, it was a special birthday after all) and gave him a sizeable sum which we're hoping he won't fritter away on unnecessary extravagances or, worse still, booze.

So far, so good. He's stashed the money in his bank account and plans to use it to travel around Europe over the summer.

But we felt duty bound to spring something on him, so we decided to put together a book of photographs chronicling Sam's life so far. Snowman copy blog size.jpg

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but pretty soon it was occupying entire weekends.
Scouring through shelves of photo albums was just the start of it. There were also drawers and boxes full of pictures we hadn't got around to mounting in albums.

Then there was the selection process, involving much disagreement, followed by the tricky business of placing them in some sort of order.

Had we missed out key relatives or friends? They are, after all, part of his life too. We were forced to backtrack just in case.

Photographs taken on old fashioned 35mm film - which was most of them - had to then be scanned and saved onto a computer file in order to utilise the technology that would make the book possible. with dad copy blog size.jpg

Believe me, this was a labour of love that drove us to distraction, eating up days on end.

The outcome, however, was superb, even if I say so myself. So much so that we ordered extra copies.

Sam seemed genuinely touched by the book, if not slightly embarrassed.

One thing it brought home to me was the importance of taking photographs of children at every stage of their lives.

They might sigh and throw a strop - especially during those truculent teenage years - but persevere. It'll be worth it in the long run.

Incidentally, if you're interested in putting together a book of photographs, the software I used came from a company called Blurb. You'll find them easily enough online.

I don't have shares in the company or any other reason to plug them, so there's no ulterior motive in my mentioning their name.

The service they provided was very good and reasonably priced. If Sam has half as much fun travelling around Europe as we had - despite the occasional hiccup - putting together this book, it'll be worth it.