Throwback Thursday: Photography in 1910?

by Skip Cohen

​There are times when life simply gets in the way, and that's what has been happening over the last couple of weeks. In fact, I've missed Throwback Thursday more than once, and those who follow me regularly know how much I love old photographs.

The shot above is probably around the time my grandparents got engaged. It would have been taken around 1910. The second image is a few years later. But the fun of Throwback Thursday is in the hunt! I've got an album of old photographs and haven't shared the image above previously.

I pretty much grew up in my grandparents' house. They lived two miles away, but by the time I came along, they were obviously older. While there was no question they loved each other, the look on my grandmother's face above says it all! And finding old photographs brings back so many great memories of growing up around the two of them.

​One of the best marketing tools you have is Throwback Thursday posts - whether on your blog or anywhere on social media. Use old photographs to help remind Mom that it's time for a new family portrait. Why "Mom?" Because women make 98% of the decisions to hire a professional photographer in the portrait/social categories. It's not very often that any portrait artist has received a call from "Dad" about doing a new family portrait.

And in your own family - remember the old expression, "the shoemaker's children always need shoes?" Don't be a shoemaker! Be your family's historian. Use the upcoming holiday season to sort through old photographs and get the backstories, while older family members are still around. My grandparents and parents are long since gone, and I can only guess about the timing, location, and often identifying who's in the photograph!

It all comes back to Jodi Picoult's quote about photographs, which I've shared a few dozen times over the years:

"This is what I like about photographs.
They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat,
everything was perfect."