photos

They’re There

When I walked into my parents’ house the other day, I saw two large boxes of old photo albums near the front door. My mom said that they had been sitting in my grandparents’ basement for over a decade, collecting dust. When I told her she could digitize them, she said she didn’t have the time.

It made me wonder if someday, my zettabyte of personal photos would do the same. Sit in a dark cold datacenter, collecting digital dust. My children and grandchildren too busy to look through them.

That’s the blessing and curse of modern technology. On one hand, our cameras allow us to take thousands of photos and we can store them in perpetuity in the cloud. But, what for?

If you looked at my Google Photos today, you’d see a hundred photos of Bub eating cake on his first birthday, 30 photos of a random meal I had, a five-minute video of G eating oatmeal in her highchair. No one is going to look through all of this footage when I die. I don’t even know if I will look through all this footage while I’m alive.

There’s this pressure, perhaps from social media, that I have to take as many photos and videos of my children as possible, especially when they’re small. Gosh, the first few years - they grow up so damn fast. My brain mush from the sleep deprivation and constant pulling in a million directions - sometimes a photo is all I have to remind myself of their milestones. The big events in their lives and the simple daily joys.

But, I find myself rarely looking back at the photos and videos I’ve taken. I certainly don’t need so many photos of the same experience. Just one good one. At this point, a clean-up of my digital assets sounds exhausting. I keep telling myself I’ll do it someday when the kids are older. Maybe when I’m 50 I’ll make a three-hour long film with all the videos I’ve taken throughout their childhoods. It’ll be screened in our living room to an audience of two.

If I’m constantly trying to take photos and videos and I’m not going to look back at them because I’m too busy living my life, then what is the point of taking them? As soon as I turn to grab my camera, that moment with my children is gone. I am no longer present. Either I’ve interrupted the moment by being a distraction and cutting it short or I’ve lost touch with reality by putting a lens between us. As soon as I look away, I’ve lost it. They’re there, but I am not.

It’s a delicate balance of being in the moment or capturing it. They’re there, and I want to be too.

“When they were taking the picture, they were never there in the first place.”
— Charan Ranganath

Snapshots in Time

I spent months looking for just the right shoes for Bub to wear, hours debating what color sweater Steve should have on, and my free time deciding which jeans looked best on me. I planned the heck out of our family photo session because I envisioned glorious fall foliage in Vermont and our happy family glowing in the warm autumn sun.

When the session finally arrived, Bub refused to wear the shoes I chose for him. He refused to get his photo taken - literally walking away when our photographer, Amelia, tried to take our photo and screaming when we tried to pick him up. His pants were too baggy, my top was too loose, and I didn't like the way my hair looked. On top of my tantrum-throwing toddler and all the little things bothering me, the leaves had fallen off the trees by the day of our session and it was a very chilly, cloudy day. I lamented getting the coldest day of the week for our photos. I saw my dreams for the session fade away.

So much planning, so much excitement - all to have it dashed by the weather and my uncooperative toddler. Two things very much out of my control. When the photographer left, I stood in the bathroom and cried. Did we even get a single good photo? I give e v e r y t h i n g to my child and he couldn’t bring himself to listen to me for an hour.

Why do family photos matter this much to me? Because Bub reminds me everyday that life is moving too quickly. In a flash, he’ll be fifteen. Hell, I’m not looking any younger these days either. These photos encapsulate the magic of now, the beauty of this page in our lives. Snapshots in time that will live on forever.

The lesson for this session is to take a deep breath and go with the flow. So much easier said than done when I feel like ripping my hair out and bursting into tears from the pressure of picture-perfect moments. But looking at the photos Amelia captured, she somehow captured a happy family glowing in the warm autumn sun. In hindsight, I wish I had just trusted that everything would turn out beautifully.