Ah, the circle of life. People usually think of it as a poetic phrase to help kids stomach the brutality of the food chain, no pun intended. In the video and photography business, I think of it as that little donut-shaped wonder called the DVD. It’s amazing what can be contained on that little circle, truly whole lifetimes of images, including those taken decades and decades before computers were so much as a twinkle in your eye.
We have a video-conversion service here Lawrence Photo. It’s not just about converting an 8 mm film of your grandparents having a snowball fight, though that’s certainly possible and important to do. It’s not just about transferring footage of your son’s homecoming football game off that dust-collecting VHS tape in your basement, though you should do that, too. No, it’s for more than just moving images. Video conversion also includes transferring stills—those beautiful memories you’ve captured on prints, slides, and digital images. Get them on a DVD, and you can preserve them longer and easily make copies to your heart’s content.
It can take less than a dozen years for magnetic tape to deteriorate into a haze, so I certainly don’t wish to downplay the importance of transferring your videos. I just want to point out that your stills could use that same kind of TLC via DVD, as well. Father Time has no mercy on photographs. He weakens their colors and changes their hues. He washes them out as the decades pile up. Scan them into your computer, upload them to a cloud service, and not only have you got yourself a Band-Aid but also you’ve got memories that are harder to lose and easier to share.
With the low costs of digital photography, the advent of smart-phone cameras, and the age of inexpensive point-and-shoots, we take more photographs than ever. The down side is that we also print far fewer of them, and in the end, forget far more of them over time. Dig through those boxes and pore through those digital files. Bring the images to us, and we’ll give you back a true circle of life.
Behind The Lens 