There are two train of thoughts when it comes to documenting your life with images. Either you take photos of everything from your lunch to a selfie while in bed or of just the “important” moments in life. Why? Why only important moments? Don’t you reckon there are hundreds of important moments? If I was to task you list important moments in your life you’d say graduation, wedding, own home, kids, certain holidays, that kind of thing.
But what about that time you went on a walk on your own, just with your headphones blaring your favourite tunes as you walk till the sun sets. Why not a photo of that? What about that time you felt like crap and grudgingly went round to your friends and played a board game for hours on end and they cheered you up? Why not those moments?
When you’re grey and old why only have a couple of albums to look at that tell so little of your life? I want to be reminded about that time I travelled with my best friends to Chicago to visit Mike and got to see what he was working on. Spent two weeks in Chicago and New York half of which I was alone for just taking it all in. And how I photographed an American Hockey League game in Connecticut and had to travel two hours by train thinking about how cool it was to be travelling from one state to another all on my own.
Now there’s gonna be some of you thinking “but I want to experience life for what it is, not through a camera/phone etc”. How long do you honestly think you spend taking photos? I took around 1,000 photos on my two week trip but if you ask a wedding photographer they’ll say something similar no doubt and that’s just one day.
Memories unfortunately may not last forever buuuut can with photos. So, TAKE THEM DAMN PHOTOS!