Originally posted on 6 July 2010 :

At a birthday party last week, I saw a six year old girl taking pictures. The results were immediately available and what I saw left me impressed. The photographs were as good as any which I have seen. My mind’s eye went back to the time when I was at the Academy, and was a member of the Camera Club. One had to make several settings and the film roll, when exposed, had to be given to the laboratory for ‘developing and printing’ I rarely got more than half the pictures right. It has now been reduced to a child’s play, and the costs have dropped to a pittance.

But indeed, the pictures we treasured those days were taken by professionals, who operated from their studios. A family group photograph was quite a rigmarole, because at the studio, one had to sit absolutely still for at least six to ten seconds for the camera to receive the image on its plate. One then had to wait for several days for the result to come. But when the picture came, it was a treasure. People used to get them framed and display them on the walls. The memory of every possible detail used to get embedded on the memory screens.

From an old album, I pulled out a picture taken in 1942. For some inane reason, the picture of the little child sitting on the front stool has caught my imagination, and I have been gazing at it for several days. It seems that the poor little toddler could not sit still, despite the bouquets of flowers in his hands. And so there was a quiver in his left leg. Since ‘snap’ photography had not yet arrived, the shaking of the leg is there to stayforever!

(If you like the little child, it is me. If not, I do not know who the hell he is)

We have come a long way in the art of photography. I have recently received some pictures from my friends in which ‘still’ photographs are enriched with a slight motion which is so embedded in the end result that a very graceful suggestion of life is added to them. If you click on the link below, and scroll down, you will see four pictures which have that kind of motion. This process is a revival of ‘cinemagraphic pictures’ Sometimes. I wonder what our grand children are destined to see when they reach our age!

http://www.whudat.de/cinemagraphic-pictures-by-jamie-beck-3-bilder/