Sometimes that smile comes relatively cheaply: peek-a-boo is
free to play, and at just about 8 months old, it is guaranteed to grant a smile
or two. Sometimes the cost is a bit
higher; gas at $4.17 a gallon, a few hours, and some groceries gets you up to
the lake, and Grayson was certainly impressed with the cabin. Other times, a family vacation to somewhere
warm can cost thousands of dollars. You
hope that the investment of time and money is worth your while, that you (and
your child when s/he gets older) will have memories that last a lifetime.
As we grow older, though, memories blur. They fade and morph. They get dim.
Knowing this, and being an inventive, technologically advanced society
with the kinds of disposable income that affords us the opportunity to take
vacations, we have created ways to preserve these memories, or more accurately
the moments associated with these memories.
Photos and videos have been around for a long time now, and they’ve been
accessible to the middle-class public for at least a half-century. In fact, the cost of capturing memories has
diminished greatly over time, becoming exponentially cheaper over the last
decade or so. Today, if you have about
$200, you can get a device that not only makes phone calls, but can take very
acceptable digital images and shoot high-definition digital video. No longer do you need to spend $1,000 on a
good camera, another $1,000 or so in lenses and filters, $5 for a roll of film
and another $5 to process that film.
Heck, you don’t even need to think in terms of numbers of exposures; you
aren’t limited to 24 or 36. This rough
math doesn’t even account for the cost of a “camcorder,” VHS tapes and the VCR
on which to play them back.
The seemingly costless access to digital photos and video
has changed the way most people think about capturing these memories. The majority of images today are
spur-of-the-moment, candid shots. The
days of posing for a photo, while not gone, are waning. The care taken to make sure the images are
quality has dramatically decreased; if the photo doesn’t turn out, all you have
to do is delete it and try again. I
would wager that I currently have more photos of my son in 8 months than my
mother has of me in my first 35 years.
The memories are no less important, but accessibility to capture the
moments (with a camera always in your pocket) is infinitely greater. I often take this fact for granted…
…until that camera ends up in water…
You learn the true price of keeping a memory from dissolving. It costs anywhere from $500-$1500 for the
lot. The wonderful news is that with
technology, most of these moments can be recovered most of the time. Data recovery services (and the digital media
they recover) make possible what was once impossible. If your photos and videos on film were
destroyed in a flood or fire 20 years ago, no amount of money could bring them
back. Today, even a mangled hard drive
contains some data, and there are people out there who will work tirelessly to
move that data from an unstable device to a stable one. With the proper mix of science, love and
time, a large percentage of photos and videos can be restored. The missing ingredient: mullah.
Now I’m left to do some more math. The true cost of a memory is “the price to
recover my data” divided by “the number of memories can I recover.” How much would you pay for a memory? Whatever the cost, my credit card will only
charge me a percentage every month to spread those payments out over time.
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