Nobody move! Let’s take a photo first.
You know the drill — there’s always that person who always has their iPhone out, pointing the camera around like a wand and using their off hand to round people up for photo ops.
It can be annoying, and it can feel pointless. A waste of time and a symptom of a social media-obsessed generation.
When I’m the one holding the camera — and that is often — my friends sometimes groan at the delay I’m stirring.
Just give me two seconds, please.
More photos, really?
Yes, really.
These conversations can grow tiresome because they can make everyone pause the current moment for the sake of creating an artificial one. A photo, unless candid and taken in secret, usually requires people to stop what they’re doing, look in one direction and smile. (Even if that’s not what they had been doing a frame before.)
But that’s okay. Photos give us a reason to look back and a chance to share and publish.
Point and aim and click. One two three. Instant and automatic as long as you can count on one hand. Then you can send, save, frame, pin to a cork board or put it on the fridge. Doesn’t that seem like a fair trade to you? An investment worth your time.
Capture moments intentionally. Not for the sake of social media, but because the fallibility of memory obliges you to. Pictures remind you that time is fleeting, precious, and not promised.
Those people wielding cameras, while they may be irksome in the moment, are the ones you thank months and years down the line for capturing memories. Bite-sized pieces of nostalgia, conveniently saved to the Cloud and forever shareable.
When I take photos, it isn’t because I want to see more of what I’m seeing now. I take photos because I know, later on, I’ll be happy I did.
People feel good knowing that, when a sappy wistfulness rolls around, photos can help. The memories feel more secure. More real. When nostalgia strikes, you can lean on photographs to piece back the memories of what used to be. When things happen, take photos even if you don’t want to at that specific moment.
Later on, you’ll be glad you did, and you’ll appreciate those photos as much as your friends and family will.
Keep a visual log of things you do, people you spend time with, people you love. A scrapbook. Snapshots of moving memories that are bound to get blurrier as time goes by — that’s when photos really become valuable.
Hold still everyone, I’m trying to take a photo!
The next time you hear someone say that, try not to groan. Better yet— now that you’ve read this, perhaps it’ll be you calling the shots next time, rallying your friends to get into the frame.
Photos: portable and shareable keepsakes that you can only get in a specific moment before it passes forever. Both nostalgia-inducing and nostalgia-preserving items, unique to circumstance.
Take more of them. Be in more of them. See what happens. Your future self — and your friends and family, your boss, your future spouse and kids — will thank you for it.
So when your friend inevitably says: More photos, really?
The answer that your future self will appreciate: Yes, really. Now hold still.
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