Friday, July 20, 2007

Worth a Thousand Words

Does anyone own one of those digital picture frames? I don't know anyone who owns one but that may be because I know a lot of geeks. They've just got pix on their computers or their wall paper or their screen saver.

One of the tricks one of my buddies used to do was whenever someone was presenting in a business meeting and started to jabber so long that their screen saver came on and it was a picture of their kids, he'd pipe up and say something along the lines of "Who's that ugly kid?" For some reason, the presenter parent never really seemed to think that was very funny. Wonder why?

But I digress. As usual.

I think the reason I don't have a digital frame is that I don't really like pictures that much. Oh, sure they're swell when they're on your My Space page and you're holding up pumpkins to your breasts, but once you make the Miss America pageant, they get leaked and then you've got a real PR problem on your hands. Or chest as it were. Yes, Miss New Jersey. I'm talking to you.


Plus, Wife and I seem to have no good pictures of ourselves. When we go someplace on vacation, we're usually looking to get away from people. So that when we finally find something goofy to take a picture of, it's only one of us in it. Or it's just a picture of a sign that doesn't make sense or is mis-spelled or warns of impending lava flows.

Digital cameras are great. Because everyone is too lazy to actually print out the photos so you're never stuck looking at someone else's vacation photos. I'm old enough to remember when my Pop used to bust out the slide projector and we'd get stuck looking at all those old vacation photos. Ugh. Man, my sibs looked miserable in all those photos. Thank goodness the parents got that driving wanderlust out of their system before I was around. Pop tells such romantic sounding stories about how they stayed at rustic camprounds all the way from Ohio to California. And those photos of the flash flood in Nevada and having to stop the car on the highway at a highspot and watching the water start to cover the road below them really sounds like a great time.

I also can't imagine giving a digital photo frame to someone with pictures of yourself in it. That's a pretty healthy self-image if you go that route. I know you're enamored of me, but when I'm not around, you can look at all these various poses of me. Try to restrain yourself. If you do something like that, you probably also refer to yourself in the third person.

The concept of a digital frame is a great one. Anyone pulled it off successfully? Giving it or getting it?

4 comments:

Wicked H said...

It's a great gift for techno-challenged Parents/Grand Parents. We gave one to our Parents for their anniversary. It is loaded with hundreds of pictures of everyoe in the family. When you get bored with that set of hundreds, you can put others on there. It keeps them amused and connected.

Elsa said...

I was just thinking of that the other day...about everyone having digital cameras and not printing out pics anymore. I used to do that all the time...take lots of pics, get them developed (I'm aging myself here) and put them in albums. But, I was never one to show them to anyone since I didn't want anyone showing me theirs. But now with the digital camera - it's great - I'm saving lots of $ on developing.

BTW, I don't know anyone who has those digital frames. I'm also not much of a photo person...of people. I take photos of things, places, oddities, food, etc - but almost never of people I know.

Anonymous said...

I was thinking that grandparents would probably like something like that frame, as wicked suggested. Those are the only people it's okay to send pictures of yourself to.

I know what you mean about having vacation pictures with just one of you. My husband and I run into the same problem. There's this mini tripod thing you can get at compact-impact.com that snaps on to a water bottle, so you have a tripod anywhere you go. I don't have one, but I'm thinking of buying one.

t2ed said...

I've got a feeling if I bought one of these for my parents, I'd just wind up doing more tech support than I already do.