Take A Picture Here, Take A Souvenier

On our family trip, I found myself periodically vexed by the feeling that I should be taking a photo of the activity or experience in which we found ourselves. It was a compelling thought, since I grew up in an environment that was heavily photographed. This was especially true of my summers. All the comings and goings at our family's cabin were carefully documented by my mother and her Kodak Brownie. Albums were filled quicker than we could keep up, and so we eventually switched to metal recipe boxes. All of our pictures were stacked in them. Family reunions, sleepovers, new construction, it was all there. When a roll of film came back from the developer, we would have to catalog them carefully with those that came previous. Eventually, it became all but impossible to flip through all those photos because they were so densely packed. All those memories with no practical way to share them.

Now we share our pictures digitally. If we don't like the looks of the moment we have just captured, we simply hit delete and take another shot. My mother loves it when we send her links to our latest online photos, but she always feels a twinge of regret that she doesn't have the tactile sensation of holding a print in her hands. I understand that. I miss the five by sevens that we used to get by the dozens. I have offered to order some of our best moments for her from our virtual albums, but trying to decide on which images deserve to make it to their analog state is a chancy operation. Digital photography is almost too casual. It all happens with the relative ease and frequency of a cellular phone call.

And so, we wrestled with the compulsion to document every moment of our family sojourn. We did the best we could to capture those days or activities that we were certain that we would forget if we didn't get a snapshot or two. Or more. Then we culled through the data, and found that much of what we had was out of focus or poorly lit or someone had their eyes closed. Just like the olden days. And maybe we could just print them all out. And store them in tin recipe boxes.