Undated Fall 1989, Medway, Mass.–Medway High School quarterback Pete Carmichael Jr. runs away from would be tacklers during a game in 1989. Carmichael's playing days have long since passed but he has risen through the NFL coaching ranks to be the offensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints. Photo By David Carson-copyrighted 1989

I guess everyone is feeling a little nostalgic lately on this blog.  Many of our posts are about things that happened years ago. But photographs by their nature are little slices of history with stories that can bring us back to places and times long forgotten by our brains.

I have two contributions to make today.  One is of a personal note and the other is from an assignment I shot early this week.  Both photos are copied from hard prints that are more than 2 decades old.  First the story behind the personal photograph.

This is a photo of Pete Carmichael Jr. running for his life when he was the quarterback of the Medway Mass. high school football team.  Carmichael and I attended the same school and because of our last names I sat behind him for six years through junior high and high school homeroom. Through the proximity of our seats we became friendly over the years, but we didn’t hang out together outside of school.

My last post was about the importance of archiving your photos and how photos get better with age.  This picture of Carmichael is a good example of that.  I found this photo in a box of prints sitting in my parents house.  I obviously liked the picture enough at the time (20 years ago) to print it.  It’s far from a perfect image—it’s grainy, not very sharp and it’s fairly apparent that I didn’t know what I was doing in the darkroom when I made this print. But for me that was pretty good picture at the time. (My boss might argue that there are days now when this image would be a good effort for me.)  This photo, as simple as it is, has some nice historic information like the uniforms, the way the players are wearing their socks, and the grass field which is becoming more and more rare at high schools these days. But this picture’s main historic significance comes from all the things Carmichael has accomplished in his life and will accomplish in the future.

See, Carmichael is arguably one of the most successful members of the Medway High School class of 1990.  He is currently the offensive coordinator for the 8-0 New Orleans Saints and has for years coached and shaped one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, Drew Brees. Brees is currently the highest rated quarterback in the NFL with a passer rating of 106.1, and is tied for the league lead in touchdowns with 17.   (I fear for the Rams this weekend) There are lots of bad teams out there this year in the NFL who will be looking for a new head coach at the end of the season. I’m no expert, but Carmichael has always been smart, and other teams will see that in him too.  If he doesn’t get picked up this year it won’t be long before he’ll get his shot at being a head coach somewhere.  And when he becomes a head coach, this picture’s story will get that much better.

Here is the other photo I’d like to talk about.

I met William W. Blount, of Florissant, before a concert by school children for Veterans.  Blount was proudly toting around two pictures of himself in uniform during the Korean war.  These pictures have survived six decades because they are in hard print form.  It’s wonderful Blount still has these pictures after almost six decades.

My concern is today’s veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will have no images of themselves to show to their grandkids.  Digital imaging has cheapened pictures and made the process very casual and disposable.  A vast majority of images are now viewed only moments after they are taken on the tiny screens of cell phones and cheap digital cameras.  These cell phones and cameras get lost or broken, the images contained on them are never printed, and visual record of these people’s lives is gone.  So my point again is to value your pictures, print them out and file them away to be enjoyed years later. Your visual history is a treasure, don’t casually lose it!