On Photography and Documentation

Can you believe this picture was taken a year ago?  Eliot was almost three months old there.  He and I have both changed a lot since then.

You know, he is kind of making the same face (same expression in the eyes and lips) in this photo from the other day.  Ha!

As you can see, I absolutely love playing the "this time last year" game with photos.  I did it before Eliot too.  I've always felt the need to document everything.

Photographs are so important to me.  I received my first digital camera for my sixteenth birthday.  It was your typical point-and-shoot camera, but my parents understood that pictures meant so much to me that they gave it to me about four months early.  I had no idea!  They said they wanted me to have it early to go ahead and take the pictures before the memories went away.  Or, maybe my sister had been complaining about me "borrowing" her camera indefinitely.  Before that, I used to take my parents' digital camcorder around to get stillframes of me and my friends.  I used to record all of our band practices and our silly adventures.

I have tried to take pictures of everything.  I used to carry my camera with me in my purse.  When Chris and I got married, we bought our first DSLR together--a Canon Rebel--and took pictures all the time.  Looking back, Chris and I laugh because we almost exclusively take photos of Eliot now.  Before, it was always each other and the pets.  Maybe the subject of your photos says something about your priorities.

Over the past few years, I've been privileged to help document other people's memories as well.  I've photographed a few weddings, a family reunion, and engagement sessions.  I really enjoy being able to give people good-quality photographs that capture the day's emotions.

When Eliot was a newborn, I tried to take a picture of him every day.  I found myself setting up photo shoots at night because our day-to-day ended up so busy that it was hard to find a time with the right lighting.  After about a month and a half of that, we relaxed some and just tried to take photos a lot.  Eliot has an album on our Flickr page for each month.  I get frustrated when an album only has about eight photos for the whole month, but I remind myself of two things.  First, I also make albums for each of our adventures, so there might be (and usually are) many more photos of him throughout the month; they are just clumped in a different album.  Secondly, if I had as many as eight photos of myself each month as a baby, I'd be impressed with my parents.

I constantly have to remind myself, though, to try to not only document the memories, but also be a part of them.  That is, I get so wrapped up in taking the right photo sometimes that I forget that we're at the park to play, not just for a photoshoot.

"A frog!"

 For being so concerned with photos and celebrating memories, though, we have very few pictures of us hanging on the walls.  As in only our wedding portraits and a shot of McAfee Knob.  We planned to make a big "photo wall" with different frames, but we never did.  Now that we may be moving, it seems like a silly time.  I have so many pictures I'd like to frame and ones I'd love to have canvases made out of.  Like this one.  What a darling face.

In a week and a half, we will be having our pictures taken.  This will be the first time we've been photographed professionally as a family by someone other than me with the self-timer.  It is actually in celebration of our fifth wedding anniversary and will be taken by the field of wildflowers that we were supposed to get married in front of (Tropical Storm Barry changed our outdoor wedding plans).  I'm so excited!