The Family Album - What Happened?

Remember when you was a child? When your parents would bust out the good old family album and you'd sit around it looking at the old pictures? Something like this?

Do you remember that? All the embarrassing pictures of you as a baby sitting on the toilet or in the bath, pictures you wish never existed of you in a little dress or suit being taken to a wedding? How the family would react to them, the memories they stored...


Whatever happened to that? The modern day 'Family Album' has turned into this.

Families don't even have to get together to see images of their children or nephews, memories are turned into text speak slang, nothing but a picture on a computer screen.


So what happened? We evolved, that's what. The internet blew up and tore holes in many old traditions, such as photo albums, how we communicate, how we show the world our stuff. I mean come on, do schools even offer kids a chance to get a penpal anymore?


We evolved, and in some ways, not for the better. Communication is almost non existent now, instead of writing letters to far away friends people prefer to just talk to them on messenger or social networking sites, instead of taking photos carefully to keep the memories in an album, kids just snap at every moment when out with friends, not caring if the pictures are blurred, out of focus or misaligned because they can just edit them later or toss them into an online album.


Photography was one of the things that took a nosedive thanks to the internet. It used to be all about getting perfection, or the closest thing to it. Pictures were taken carefully with precision, they were developed the same way too because you only had a limited amount of space on some negatives. Same with colour film came out, budget was an issue so photos were taken with heed and care for their surroundings and posture.


But now? You can grab a camera off the internet for about £20, then kids go snapping away at anything that moves with no care in the world because the camera does all the settings for you. Those who go pro take more care in their work, but not as much care as they would if they were working with film as the only thing hindering them is the space on their memory cards which are very cheap to get hold of. Amazon sells 4GB SD cards for less than a fiver and most cameras take this as their main storage device. The only other thing that hinders them is their cameras limits, but at the end of the day it's the Photographer that makes the photograph, not the camera.


To be honest, I hate how technology has taken this away. Photos aren't private anymore. They used to be something only you, the family and trusted friends saw, maybe even the boy/girlfriend of an older sibling. Now? Now anyone can see it with just a simple bit of code.


It's literally a case of three steps. Step one - Go to someones Facebook page who you want to see photos of, you don't have to be their friend.


Step two - Type in this code into the web address bar you have open with the Facebook page on it.

javascript:(function(){CSS.removeClass(document.body,%20'profile_two_columns'); tab_controller.changePage("photos");})()

Step three - Result. All the images that person has shared using the default privacy settings Facebook uses [and lets face it, hardly any of todays youth bother changing them] will come up for all to see. It's as simple as that.


Until something is done, it will always be that easy to see someones private photos, no matter how private they have them.


Bibliography -


Photo 1 - http://www.memoriesdream.eu/memories-images/family-album-big.jpg
Photo 2 - http://img.labnol.org/di/facebook_photos.jpg
Amazon Prices - http://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-SDHC-Secure-Digital-Card/dp/B000WQKOQM/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1319631682&sr=1-1
How to know if your 'Private' albums are visible to strangers - http://www.labnol.org/internet/facebook-photo-albums-visible/13546/