Tucked Away

I bought a photo printer today. When I was skimming through all the photos I have taken, finding something interesting to print, I realized how much details I was ignoring all the time.

Carrying a smart phone, and occasionally a digital camera, I have the habit of taking pictures of whatever is happening around me (or mostly the static environment, since I love structures). Over the years I accumulated piles of images, most of which I did not even look at twice.

When I chose a well shot photo and printed it out, something strange happened. I found myself taking more time examining the photo in my hands, in contrast to what I usually do on a screen.

I found a pedestrian in the background, looking at my lens with a curious face. I realized a ribbon tied upside-down on my doll's dress. I spotted a bird on the tree, outside my window.

The details in the pictures have always been there, but I have learned to ignore most of them when they are presented on a screen. This tendency is perhaps a response to information overload from the Internet.

There is a forgotten world tucked away in the billions of bytes of storage. Bringing them back to the physical world somehow revives fragments of it, and I now appreciate even more the value of an old album.