A picture is worth a thousand Prozac.
Or something.
Sure, the original saying is about a thousand words, and involves the picture’s ability to create a very specific image of a place, or evoke an astonishingly real emotion, but bear with me here. I do have a point.
Pictures are more than simply images on a page, or pixels on a screen, data on a computer drive. Pictures, no matter the medium, can be a gateway to happiness at any time of the day, any season of the year.
At Casa de Dude, we have an Apple TV. It’s a set-top box that streams content from the web onto our television set. Well, that’s what it’s supposed to be, but we use it for something a bit more prosaic.
The Apple TV has a number of different screen saver modes, but the one we use is the one that throws images from our photo stream of recent pictures onto the television so we can sit and watch it. And that’s what we’ll do. Someone will mention what was going on in one photo and then we’ll all look and start to see other pictures of similar events.
Sooner than we realize, it’s two hours later and all we’ve been doing is watching pictures flash by on the screen.
I imagine it’s rather like forcing someone to watch your vacation snaps, only in this case people actually want to see the pictures.
We’re not the only people who enjoy pictures and see them as a value, an aid in achieving happiness. Take, for instance, the Happiness Project. In a blog post from earlier this year, Gretchen Rubin, a (believe it or not) important writer on happiness, talked about seven different ways that photographs can boost your happiness.
The first two reasons should come as no surprise as, basically, it’s exactly what we’ve been talking about here at Casa de Dude:
1. Photos remind us of the people, places, and activities we love.
2. Photos help us remember the past.
One thing I’ve been doing a lot of lately is using my futurephone to take pictures of things that interest me, or as notes that I’ll want to go back to at a later date. I also have been using pictures from there as a sort of filing cabinet. Again, not alone.
3. Photos can save space while preserving memories. Rubin talks about a service that offers to take pictures of kids’ artwork and then let you keep the photos to look at while storing the artwork. Not a bad idea.
4. A photo of something can sometimes replace the thing itself. This was something I ran into just yesterday. I was working through some pictures and trying to sort them by person when I ran across a series of pictures of my mom, who died in 2011. I smiled through tears to see her so many times so unexpectedly.
5. Photographs allow you to curate things you love. This one was something about Pinterest and, really, even though I’m there, I don’t quite understand it so I’m just passing.
6. Taking photos fosters creativity. Seems pretty self explanatory.
7. Taking photographs can act as a diary. Here’s something I’ve been working on lately. My futurephone has a new app called Memoir. It’s a great little app that goes through my photos and then throws up the pictures I took on that day a year ago, or two, or three or whatever year it can. Another app called Momento is a great daily diary that integrates with my social media feeds and my photos.
With the rise of the futurephone camera, taking pictures has never been easier. Not only that, but it’s easier than ever to actually look at them beyond the day you brought them home from the photo development store. No more shoeboxes.
Hit the digital photo file where you have your photographs stored and haul them out. You’ll be astonished by how much your young dudes and dudettes have grown even in such a short time.
And then laugh.
