Dear LPG,

I have enjoyed many of the articles on the LPG website and especially smile when I read the ones in the ‘Every picture tells a story’ series.   I have always felt that pictures are so full of memories and the fact that they have become so much easier to take over the years has made it easier to keep our history alive.    They now offer much more accurate images of what was originally intended.  I am not sure the colour has a lot to do with it, although many younger people will tell you differently, but the fact that we can now take them at a moment’s notice and make a memory of an event so much more quickly is something I think we should all take advantage of.

When we look at the really old pictures our 21^st century eyes are often unimpressed because, we who are used to seeing much sharper images, are missing what a vast improvement they must have been on the portraits which, before them, were the only way to see, if you weren’t actually there.  Photographs these days don’t have that quality of the perfect person in perfect settings but they do offer a much truer impression of what people and things looked like back then.  It must have been a vast improvement on the days when a painting only ever showed what the artist saw, which had to be good if they wanted to get paid for their work.

In the first years of photographs, we know that the subject of a picture would be expected to hold their pose for minutes at a time before the picture became properly exposed and there is no doubt that it is easier to hold a straight-faced pose than one with a smile.  Just try a quick session of musical statues and you too will be thinking ‘No wonder everyone looked so severe!’

Now we can afford to be relaxed because a photo is an instant thing.  They no longer need developing and don’t cost so much if you get it wrong, you just take another one. I know I am not the only picture taker who always takes at least three and deletes the ones I don’t like later.

Nearly everyone has a camera in their pocket because, in spite of lock-down, the pre-requisite items we look for when leaving the house are money, keys and the mobile phone which will often take a video of substantial length, not to mention the all-important selfie.

So, while most of us have seen pictures of our grandparents which will give an insight into what they actually looked like but with a perfect background and perfect posture, our grandchildren will be able to see so much more of what we got up to, what our homes were like, what we did, and how we sounded and smiled. 

As long as, like LPG encourage, we get our phones out of our pockets and snap from time to time.

TS, Lee.