Wednesday, May 8, 2013

A Call To Write: The Original Instagram and Stamps of Poets

‘fore Insty filters
‘twere captured moments- instants
film and Polaroids

That was a little haiku I wrote for you to tell you about my May giveaway! This month we’re getting extra nostalgic – not only will we celebrate the love of the handwritten postal letter but also remember how we used to visually capture our moments. I found some Polaroid note cards with matching envelopes. Harkening back to the days before Instagram and filters and smart phone photography when film reigned supreme and when immediate photography resulted in sometimes messy, funky, filter-esque images to cherish.

I figured pairing them with these sweet Poet Forever stamps from the one-and-only USPS made for a nice little package:
PolaroidsandPoets
Unfortunately there was a pretty poor showing for last month’s giveaway. Hopefully this one will pique a bit more interest. Here comes the question…

Question Number Three:

Images are becoming our primary form of communication more and more. When we don’t have the words we text or email a photo. When we want to say something sassy or funny we send memes with limited text and funny picture to match. And I don’t understand SnapChat but I think it is all about temporary images that cannot be captured for long… So my question is:

Do you have a single picture or image (printed or digital) that you truly cherish?
OR
Is there a moment of something in your mind you see as clearly as a photo, though none exists?

If I have more than 10 entries for this month I will randomly choose a winner, otherwise with 10 or fewer I will choose my favorite response. As usual after 2 weeks I will choose and announce the winner on The Culinary Librarian. The winner will need to email me the address they would like me to send the stationary and stamps within 48 hours. If the winner doesn’t respond I will choose a new recipient and announce the new winner on blog.

4 comments:

Lo said...

My favorite picture is of my grandfather's and my feet from when I was 3 years old. I used to follow my grandpa around like his shadow and I can distinctly remember sitting on our cabin's front steps and being so proud that I was wearing sandals like him. While our faces aren't in the picture, it's been my favorite, and a definite family favorite, forever.

Jessica said...

I try not to focus much time during an experience worrying about taking pictures, instead putting my energy into the actual experience. Though I sometimes do regret not having photos from certain times I am so grateful that the "photos" that are my actual memories are so right on, since my attention was fully focused. I love going though photos, specifically from times where we did not take nearly as many pictures.

One memory that is so crisp, was laying on the sand at a small lake at 2 in the morning when I was 17 with my boyfriend (now husband) watching our first meteor shower. When you are 17 every life event seems big, and this one was bigger than most, and the fact that I ended up marrying the boyfriend makes it all that much more special. The details are so very, very bright even after all this time, I could easily visualize it as a photo.

If we had tried to take a picture of that night, it never would have done it any justice, I am so glad though that my memory has held on to it so well.

Tracy said...

I cherish many photos. But one that I love is of my grandmother in a checkered shirt and jeans (which she never wore when I knew her) in her late teens, leaning against a fence, laughing and petting a horse, her hair blowing in the wind. She knew my grandfather, but they weren't yet married, and the three generations of us now living weren't yet even a twinkle in her eye. She didn't have an easy life on the farm, and she wasn't always an easy person in the city, where she and my grandfather settled. And I have many fond memories of her, with and without photographic documentation. But that carefree moment captured on film of the girl who would become my grandmother, with her horse, before life became LIFE, is one of my favorites.

Elizabeth J. Neal said...

It makes me a little sad to see faux-Holga or buy instagram likes cheap faux-Polaroid effects on digital photos for that reason—especially when those effects are so immediately identifiable as such.