Do you get depressed looking at pictures from your youth?

I'm a great believer if the best time of your life isn't now, change things so it is. Based on that I loved being young and I'm just as happy at 59. The only advice I offer young people is to not waste their youth as it only lasts for a short time where middle age lasts for decades.
 
Nice charjohn, but who took the picture of you taking the picture of your mom? Love those scalloped edges to the print.
 
Depressed at how bad a photographer I was? Sometimes.

Depressed at the pictures I missed? Rather more often.

Depressed at the memories? Very, very seldom. Life was good to me then: it's good to me now. Anything I can't handle is down to me.

Sure, I have pictures of girls I was very much in love with. But I think I'm at least as much in love now. Probably more in love: I've had more practice.

Some things were much newer then (love, motorcycles, cars...) But equally, I've had time to refine my tastes and selections.

Still drinking Laphroaig, though.

Cheers,

R.
 
koven said:
How do so you older guys deal with looking at pictures from the past? Are you just happy to have had that memory or do you ever want to go back? Or is life better?
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Honestly, my life is better now than it was then... so, when I look back I am very comfortable knowing that **** got better.
 
I get depressed that my parents managed to put about 20-30 photos a year that summarized everything into photo albums that everyone enjoys looking at 50-60 years later. I shoot 1,000 times as many photos as they did but do not make those albums for later on down the road.

Ten years ago my sister needed a 1940's photo of people picnicking beside their car on Daytona Beach for a tourist brochure. But she was over budget and had no money to have one shot or buy a stock photo. So the international tourism brochure for the southeastern US featured a photo of our mom and us kids standing beside our 1946 Ford on the beach, straight out of the family photo album.
 
I forgot to respond to the OP's topic!

There are few photos of me in my youth. When I see one I am so happy I am not there any more.

Randy
 
Maybe very occasionally. Mostly I get nostalgic. Sometimes I get surprised, as I see something I had forgotten about.
 
I totally understand, Koven. I'm feeling much the same right now.

For me, the problem is that I graduated last September. Since then I've had to deal with my friends moving away, myself moving back to a place which I hate, and a broken foot that is seriously threatening my ability to continue to do an activity I've done since I was 12 (skateboarding, for the record).

Add into that a long stint of unemployment that has killed my original post-uni plans, and looking back on my photos of the last three years is pretty painful; I know that never again will all those people I love be living in the same place, and that those brilliant three years have gone, never to return.

A man named Scott Bourne once wrote "I have chosen a life of memory. I am obsessed with both the beauty and horror the world has allowed me. More often than not it is the same memory that not only brings me complete joy, but also such pain, due to the knowledge of its departure. A realization that I may never know those joys again has now become the basis for pain." That sums it up better than I ever could.

But times move on and times change. And I've spent the best part of 3 months sitting on my arse, injured and unemployed, and trying to cling on to the past. The future (and the struggle to get started on it) scares the hell out of me. But it's my future, and I'm going to start making it. I just don't know exactly how yet.
 
10 years ago life's ups and downs felt much higher and steeper, than now. thats maybe biggest difference between 25 and 35 I've noticed.
 
Well, I'm 72 and I have a lot of good experiences to look back on, lots of photographs (mainly slides) from 18's to about 30 ish and lots of prints since. Some good, some a bit mediocre.
Don't regret any of it and in fact I look forward to all that lies ahead until I slip the net, because you can't change what's already happened, so better to work on the things you still have some control over.

What I do regret though is seeing what a pompous and self-righteous little twit I was from reading the letters I wrote my parents weekly in the four years I was living in England aged 18-22. My mother kept them and I was given them when she died. I read them and burned them. I wasn't the sort of person then that I'd want to be these days. Things have changed, and I've changed.
 
...i'll cry when i turn 30. it will be a mixture of "whoohoo, i made it to 30!!" and "goddamn, it sucks to be 30!!" granted i'm young and don't really know anything, but it seems to me like one's 20s and one's retirement years are the best times in life. everything in between doesn't seem to be like much to look forward to.

yeah, i'm negative, i know. :rolleyes:

when i look back at photos from 10 years ago when i was 16 (holy cr@p that was 10 years ago??) i just laugh. what a mixed bag things were back then...
 
nighstar said:
...i'll cry when i turn 30. it will be a mixture of "whoohoo, i made it to 30!!" and "goddamn, it sucks to be 30!!" granted i'm young and don't really know anything, but it seems to me like one's 20s and one's retirement years are the best times in life. everything in between doesn't seem to be like much to look forward to.
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I have to agree in that turning 30 also seemed like a big deal - you can't say or think "I'm in my 20's" any more. However, turning 40,50 & 60 didn't seem anything special. But 70 started to sound a bit old, even though most of the time I still think I'm 35.
Age is a state of mind. You can think "old" and pretty soon you'll act old and be old, no matter what your age. Or you can think "young" keep healthy and active, keep an open mind and be interested in what's going on, plan a few things to look forward to and mix with people a bit younger so you don't become a fuddy-duddy.

I fly gliders, go out to play music three nights most weeks - either Blues or Country or Folk, belong to an active photographic club, am about to start learning to paint watercolours, and planning a road trip around Australia for next year after the trip to Italy & France. Life is pretty interesting if you just work at it a little bit and try different stuff.
 
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