It seems that at least half of the people I know are now photographers. I'm not sure if this is because photography is something more flexible that a mom can do to earn a bit of money, or if the scrapbooking trend has fueled the movement. All I know is that many of my friends take beautiful pictures that make everything their family does look like it came straight out of a magazine. This is not a skill that I have learned. I don't have a fancy camera. I haven't even bothered to learn all of the features on the simple one I have. Sadly, the pictures I take reflect this. This lack of photographic talent runs in the family I'm afraid. My mother is a notoriously poor photographer. My dad doesn't even try. I have one brother-in-law that is better, and he was in charge of taking all pictures at family gatherings for years.
I'm not terribly interested in learning how to be a great photographer, but I would love to have lots of pictures of my family that look like they came out of a magazine. If only some of these talented friends would just follow us around once a month or something, like our own little paparazzo. The friend would take splendid candid shots of us, with wonderful natural light and expressions of delight on all my childrens' faces as we do things like bake cookies, find ladybugs in the grass, and build sand castles at the beach. That would not only supply me with pictures I could never manage on my own, but also relieve the nagging feeling of guilt that passes over me frequently when the family is doing something and I think over and over again "I should be taking pictures of this".
Kids growing up these days are going to be absolutely inundated with a photographic record of their lives. Think of the task it will be for them to do something like make a retrospective slideshow for their weddings. I didn't have one personally, but if I had, it would have taken about fifteen minutes to go through the photographs of my life. Ten years from now it will literally take these kids hours to attempt that. I don't mind not having lots and lots of photos of me throughout my life. After all, they would mainly be taken by my mother (whom I love dearly and has many fabulous talents) and wouldn't be very good pictures anyway...
3 comments:
It's all the doing of the digital camera. I am a huge fan, but realize as I look at all the really bad pictures on my computer that I didn't have to take a shot of every single expression Nathan has ever made.
I also have tons of pictures where the lighting is horrible yet I think that someday I'll fix it with Photoshop. Like I even know how to use Photoshop. Who am I kidding.
Then there is the task of scanning all the pictures that I've taken to compile a personal history. Craziness. I unfortunately have a few too many pictures. Not of my childhood, but of my adult years.
Ha ha! It's true. I've gotten to the point since I went digital that I will only keep the photos that are fabulous. There is no need to keep the ones that aren't, so I delete them. Some people cringe at this, but I don't think my kids will appreciate having thousands of photos with their eyes closed or bad lighting or whatever.
I was just thinking the other day that pictures have become kind of boring now that everyone is a photographer. I kind of miss seeing pictures of people with their mouths in weird shapes. And then I just look at EVERY SINGLE PICTURE OF ME because I do not photograph well. No. Not at all. I am always mid sentence.
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