Blog Links Update: Photos to Review...

I started a while back with my little random photo feature showing you a few of the pictures from my personal photo albums as I scan them into my extremely huge external hard drive for future proliferation to my kids. This project has reminded me of the fact that, I'm not a real photographer in any sort of professional way, but I occasionally get a shot worth keeping if only by accident.

I have always been fascinated by the unprofessional, personal photographs people take at family outings and such. In the case of my own family, my father would line us up by age, so it would look like a police line-up for witnesses with a poor memory. And can we all agree that our own pictures usually make us feel uncomfortable? But someone else looks at a picture of you and they say, "Looking good"!

So two sites I have been addicted to for a while - and no, they are not new or the current Internet sensation, are Square America and FoundPhotos. You will find them linked below.

Square America contains collections of pictures taken years ago and collected. These were taken back when people posed because taking a picture was an event.

Found Photos is different. These are pictures that have been "found" on the Internet when people have opened up their computers to file sharing programs (think Napster), so they could trade or obtain free music and movies. So say you made your mp3 files available to Napster so you could download a bunch of free music. Little did you know, you also opened it up to people who wanted to look at your family photos. Let's hope that picture you took of Grammy at the beach in her thong wasn't on the hard drive!

Regardless of the source, I have traded hours wasted looking at Chocolate Rain on YouTube, for hours wasted getting a gander into the anonymous lives of these people captured, a moment at a time.

Take a look - you have a few minutes to spare...