I got to see my great grandparent’s picture today! Family portraits were a common theme then!

In those days, families used to have someone called as a “Family Photographer” 🙂 In the current selfie-world this may sound weird, but it made sense then! Cameras were very expensive and the film that needs to be used was not like the current Digital cameras. Everyone used to pose for a picture and the photographer takes a few clicks – just to ensure they got it right! People used to plan for it and travel from afar to get themselves included in the family portrait.

These are the pictures (mostly in black & white) that would hang on the walls of our ancestral homes. Homes filled with memories of all kinds, being kept alive through these pictures.

Then came my parents era, where it was difficult to get a family photographer to come and take pictures often. We had pictures taken when we were young, but as we grew, not so many! Neither did we have mobile phones nor easily usable cameras! I look back and realized, we do not have even one family picture with all of us in it! Not one…!

Now, we take pictures of our children very often. Instead of one, we have 10 clicks. Ease of use of mobile phones and digital cameras make life easier to capture the precious moments! There are tons of pictures, for which we pay for extra storage and save as well. However, how many times do we make it a point to take a family picture – with all of us in it? Something that we all like and are ready to put it in a frame or hang it on the wall, or better still share it with our families..?

Some of my relatives have this habit of sending Christmas or New Year postcards with their family portraits on it! They send it to all our relatives! Year after year, even though we do not meet each other often, we somehow seem to have seen their family grow from babies to teens! Must be an enormous effort to get to shop and have everyone wear similar clothes, dress up and be in a good mood to have a cheerful picture taken!

I found an empty photo frame and started to look for a family portrait in all my devices and realized the last time we took one that we all liked was a decade back! The best pictures that we loved were the ones we took, however – we were missing in them!

When did you take your family portrait last? Is it the one that would go up on your wall? Or… maybe it is time to take another one 🙂