Rhonda Anderson

Rhonda Anderson (Creative Memories co-founder) talked for approximately 45 minutes at WLC 2010 and mentioned some of the following .....

She said people take sooooo many pictures today (due to digital cameras) that those photos don't even seem important anymore. According to Rhonda, people are simply overwhelmed about what to do with all their digital images; so, they're left on memory cards, hard drives, etc. and forgotten.

Take time to print out even a few of your best photos instead of just leaving them on the computer.

No time to catagorize all your photos in chronological order? Be selective then! Choose a few photos to print out and if nothing else, focus on putting together a small "theme" album with that small selection of prints.

Importance of photo albums:

Photo albums give people a sense of belonging, gratitude, self-esteem, etc.

They also preserve the past, enrich the present, inspire hope for the future.

However, photos without journaling (identification, explanation, etc.) will one day have no value. She told a story about a friend that inherited her mom's perfectly created photo albums. They were all so beautiful but without any labeling or journaling. Since the daughter had very little space in her home, out of the 11 albums, she only kept one, and threw the rest away.

According to Rhonda Anderson, journaling is key. She asked the audience what a few photos perserved with a some of your great-grandmothers writing would be worth to you and with this perspective she hoped that we would spend some time creating small theme albums with even a few pictures.

My great-grandmother's name was Dora (in fact, I was named after her) and she was my grandmother's mother. She was my mom's absolute favorite grandparent and though she talked about her with much love, I don't know anything about Dora's life. Imagine how much of a treasure even one photo with a short handwritten explanation describing the photo, or the people in the photo, or why the photo was taken, etc. would be for me. Priceless!