Beautifully assembled and annotated by my father, they portray holidays in both the UK and Europe that they enjoyed with their parents and family friends. I watched through them for hours after I came across them.
My father obeyed the album and devoured every detail of the world around him with great enthusiasm. It's great to read his thoughts next to the snaps of Windsor Castle and Ark de Triomphe.
If he had his own family, his father would not stop editing the photo album. All the holidays we took were recorded – Lake District, Somerset, Suffolk, New Forest, Devon, Scotland. Each album is in a different colour.
There's something pleasant to sit down and flip through the pages of photo albums that aren't there while looking at photos on your phone or iPad. It's much more fun to see carefully crafted and personalized albums.
With this in mind, I was happy to read how the printed photos were making a comeback. Surprisingly, this has led to the younger generation. A survey by Holiday Park Company's Haven found that 43% of people aged 18 to 27 print photos.
Given that adults have an average of 1598 photos on camera, 2574 is the most common in millennials (born between 1981 and 1996).
Photo prints defeat screen images. Albums are also becoming more popular, from basic self-adhesive versions available online to personalized books backed by attractive fabrics.
That's the main drawback of photo albums – if you want them to be a good job, it takes time. Sort, selecting and layout photos, adding captions will almost become a full-time job.
Another downside is space. We have a small bedroom where my husband made floor-to-ceiling shelves on one wall. Most of it has been featured in photo albums. There are already over 20.
Whenever I see them, I think, “What will my daughters do with them when we go?” I want to think they'll take care of them as much as I do my dad's thing, but I don't think they have the space to accommodate them.
The problem is that thousands of loose photos have already been developed, sitting in a small wallet in a large plastic container. It's enough to fill in albums in your entire library.
The days passed were much easier. The film is in canisters of 12, 24, or 36, and usually only photographed at outings or special events. You were not overwhelmed. Nowadays, most people take photos almost every day. It's the job of choosing what you like. But at least people are still printing.
When photos are included in the album, you are much more likely to see them. The survey found that many adults (19%) rarely look back at their mobile phone photos.
Despite having so many photos, one of my retirement projects is to sort them and create an album of the most important events from the mid-1990s to the present – babies, birthdays, holidays, such graduations, and parts of everyday family life.
It's not that I'm not unsure, but I look forward to it.
