Skip to main content

Keeping Memories Alive

7,836. A seemingly random number, but it's not. It's actually the exact number of images I have in my camera roll right this second- and it's bound to go up by the end of the day. Between sharing pictures among family members spread out across countries and continents, cute forwards, and pictures for my blog, my camera roll somehow spun out of control, and now, if I want to find a particular picture from a special occasion, I have a pretty hard time with it! I've also experienced, on occasion, the surprise of going through my camera roll to find a particular picture, and stumbling across others which I had completely forgotten I'd taken!


I know from chatting with friends and family that I'm not the only one who has this problem. We may be the generation who's taking the most pictures- but we're also the generation who's enjoying them the least. Perhaps with ease of access has come lack of appreciation- no more carefully planning a shot, as we can just take lots from different angles, and then pick our favourite ones later. I'm definitely guilty of this, although having used film for photography (recently) and having had to actually develop this film myself has given me a greater appreciation for the nuances of photography, and its importance in preserving memories.

Technology may have advanced, but I think we still need to see AND feel something to enjoy it to the fullest. This is why I'll always prefer real books over reading them on a laptop or tablet, and why it's so enjoyable to look at pictures in an album as opposed to on a screen. Traditional albums, as they were, are almost obsolete. In the time it takes to print pictures (or get them printed), buy an album, and then manually put in the pictures, we could do so much else. However, the fact remains that most people don't know that they have other options! And so they continue either taking hundreds of pictures without fully enjoying them, or selecting some and going through the painstaking process of putting them into a traditional album.

I found this quote from an interesting article I stumbled across online, that talked about the relationship of human memories to photographs:

It�s pretty clear that there is a connection between human memory and the photographs we take. Simply put, a photo is information about past light that we can perceive in present time. Similarly, memories are the affects of our past experiences on our present self. Photographs can serve as memory storage and, when viewed, can activate memory recall.
When I was in the U.S., it was easy enough to find services that did photobooks and canvases, and they were affordable enough that they could be done as often as one liked them. One advantage of services like these is that these photobooks, canvases and other products can be duplicated and recreated- meaning that they can simultaneously be enjoyed by family and friends across the world.



Moving back to Kenya, I automatically assumed that we had no such service, and because of this, didn't even bother to look! So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that we do. PerfectPics has been in the market for a few years now, and are the first and (at time of writing) only service in the country that does online photobooks. What I like about PerfectPics is not just that they identified a niche market and capitalised on it, but that they identified a problem- they had a very clear 'why'- much like I have done above, and set about to help people preserve and enjoy their memories.

So if you're in Kenya, and you're writing to relatives abroad to get you photobooks when they next come to Kenya, you don't need to anymore. Rest assured that there exists such a service in Kenya that truly cares about the memories you make!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Mayura: Restaurant Review

Happy new year, everyone! It's been a while, so I thought to break tradition and post on a Tuesday this time - I'm sure you're in need of new restaurant recommendations, right? Located in Kenrail towers, the Mayura  is an Indian restaurant that you may not have been to yet. I'd heard about it, but never been, so when I was invited to do a review, I naturally jumped at the chance. Located in Kenrail Towers, the ambience of the Mayura has peacock-themed, warm interiors. There's a lot of space to sit down, both inside and outside. The restaurant is the brainchild of Rajiv Segal, who has a corporate background and being from Delhi, had a high standard of quality and had developed a distinctive palate, which he wanted to bring to the people in Nairobi. The menu was chosen for us by Rajiv (and boy, did we eat a lot!). For starters, we had some paneer tikka, mutton chops, fish amritsari and banu kebab (chicken). The paneer tikka was absolutely amazing! The paneer was fresh...

How to Organize Your Closet

Today�s guest blogger is fellow Her Campus Blogger Network member, Ak Brown! This is the first post in a series of posts she�ll be doing on The Kenyan Nomad. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have! Ak�s bio: Fashionable with a hint of unconventional rawness, that's what I used to describe myself and my blog Mind of a Fashionista. Started in 2013, I have transformed this blog along with my best friend into a diverse source of fashion, style, and beauty news, trends, tips, and tricks while also conveying opinions that normally don't go with the "norm" opinion. It's morning, 6:58 to be exact.  It's time for you to get up, get ready, and get going.  After showering, brushing and flossing your teeth you head over to your closet and say to yourself "What in the f***".  Shirts are hanging off of their hangers, pants look like they got up for a late night drink and passed out on the floor, and long story short, your closet looks like an abomination.  But y...

New Technology Billed as the Latest Breakthrough in Laser Vision Correction

Here's an article I wrote, in conjunction with Dr. Mukesh Joshi of Laser Eye Centre, that got published in the Daily Nation today! It's more on the scientific side, but I thought it was worth sharing.  Do you wear contact lenses or glasses? What if you were told that you could get perfect vision by lying under a laser machine for 30 seconds without any surgical instruments touching your eye? It seems like a dream, but it is now possible, thanks to the C-Ten procedure. Patients suffering from short-sightedness, long-sightedness or astigmatism (distortion of the cornea that causes blurry vision), which cause them to need glasses or contact lenses, now have access to a procedure that can correct their vision in less than half a minute. The procedure, which takes no more than 35 seconds, is minimally invasive as there are no surgical instruments involved. The principle aim of laser vision correction is to reshape the cornea to correct vision problems. The reshaping is done to the m...