Wednesday, January 8, 2014

A year in photos

I love photographs.  Especially old photographs, and especially of families.

My maternal grandmother had a stack of old photo albums under her bedside table in her bedroom.  I loved getting them out, looking through them, and having her tell me who all the people were.  It never failed that as we were looking through them, she and my grandfather would start talking about "old times".  They would stroll down memory lane and reminisce about the folks captured in those photos.  The memories were always good ones, and the pictures always brought smiles.

That's the thing about photographs that I think I love the best.  They preserve these tiny snippets of time.  They show little pieces of reality.  They show details that might otherwise be lost whether it be the current fashion, the wall paper hanging in the house, or cars that were driven.  They can instantly take you back to a moment or detail that you would have otherwise forgotten.

The other thing I love about photographs?  When I look back at photos of my kids, I only see good times.  Parenting is hard on the best days.  After hards days, I always doubt my decisions, and worry that I'm completely ruining these precious beings God has entrusted to me.

But...

When I look back at photos from even the hardest weeks, there are smiles, and moments that meant enough to me that I took the time to pick up my camera and capture them.  It is reassuring.  It's also helpful that I usually don't pick up my camera to capture the tears and frustration.  While I think it's important to remember the hard times, I don't necessarily want to remember them with 18 megapixels.

I originally wanted to do a "day in the life" series using photographs to help me remember all of those little details that fill in the minutes of my days.  I want to remember little details like what the boys ate for breakfast and the tiger and fish plates on which they ate it.  Better yet, I want to preserve those details for my kids.  However, after having tried a handful of times to document a day in photographs, I know it's just not going to happen.  It's harder than it sounds - or at least it is with 3 small children.  But I didn't want to abandon the idea entirely.

Then I saw this project and was totally inspired all over again.

So for 2014, I'm giving it a shot.  One post a week in photos to document a few of our moments.  If nothing else, it will force me to pick up my camera and force me to post here more than once every two months.

Happy New Year!

No comments:

Post a Comment