All four of my kids have digital cameras. Their skills in photography are as varied as their ages (6-14). The three younger ones also use their cameras to record movies. I remember my first camera. It was a plastic rectangle with a big rectangular shutter button. My parents would take the film to get developed then either give me the pictures or put them in an album for me to look at whenever I wanted. I have those albums with me now on the other side of my desk. But what do I do with the countless images my children are capturing?
For the 14 (soon to be 15) year old, I have made a few CDs for him to take to school to use in his art classes. But the younger kids take so many baaaad pictures. I delete many of them after importing them to my computer. I mean, really. How many completely blurry and out of focus photos do we need of the dogs nose, or of a pair of shoes (yes, those are also blurry and shot from about 1 foot away when the camera only focuses as close as 3 feet).
But should I be deleting all these pictures they take of their own eye, or of the stove, or of the glass of milk they just finished? Or the video they shot of the television? Will they be memories for them when they are 30? Will they wonder “what ever happened to that blurry self-portrait I took where you could see my sinus cavity? Did Dad delete that?”