There comes a point in your life in which you must face certain facts about yourself. Whether you are one of those people who absolutely need to get Starbuck's five times a day, or that woman who wears make-up to bed for fear your true self would be exposed...we all have our quirks. As every psychologist would proclaim, it is the extent to which such habits and/or rituals interfere with your everyday life. For me, taking pictures of my children is becoming a great concern. Now, all you moms and dads out there would agree it is very difficult keeping within your smart phone storage plan when it comes to snapping away at your children. It is not lost on me we all have pics of them smelling a flower, making a funny face, walking, sleeping!!! At what point does it become too much?
When we were young, our parents had PHOTO ALBUMS and MEMORY BOXES to store all of our precious moments. Vacations, class trips, birthday parties, holidays, graduations, all put together in their own time capsule to be taken out and passed around at special occasions or to explore your family tree. Two things were of concern to our parents. First, they stressed as they took each picture watching the number of photos left on the roll click lower and lower. Most of the time the best moments were missed because we were "out of film"! Helpless and at the mercy of that little black and yellow roll of power. We couldn't review our pictures and retake if necessary. We even waited at least three to five days after dropping them off at the nearest photo booth in order to get developed! Imagine the suspense....Don't even get me started on the worst case scenario..."They didn't come out!". Secondly, we had to keep such pictures on shelves because God forbid a flood in the basement would wash them all away. In the case of a fire, they were lost forever!!! Today, with every digital convenience at our fingertips, scrap-booking and converting our pics to actual photo paper is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. I've lost countless baby pictures of my daughters when my pc or laptop has been wiped out, however, there has always been a way to get retrieve them. They are backed up on photo sites and social media, and we have those little SD cards, memory pens, etc...to ensure we always have options. (Whether or not they marked and organized in a reasonable fashion varies from person to person. Personally, its a guessing game for me!).
Maybe this is why I have developed such an obsession with taking pictures. Not only do I have ten pictures of the same pose taken in rapid succession, but I do not get rid of them!!! We are talking thousands and thousands of pictures of my daughters. It might even be possible to photo-flip them from birth until now and actually see their age progression as you would a flower bloom on a Discovery program! Not only do I snap away, but there is more...With this app or that photo editing program calling my name, I spend hours enhancing, editing, making collages, etc...Yesterday, we visited my parents at a county park. We were there for two hours. It was my Birthday and we thought it would be nice to meet them there and have our little ones (3yrs and 14mo's) run around the playground and visit with their grandparents. (If you are under thirty and reading this, yes, when you have children and especially if it falls on a weekday, the day is not really about you anymore. It is about your children wanting to do something fun to celebrate and its more likely that entails jumping into a ball pit or any sort of contraption that even remotely resembles a slide, or a bridge, or a swing!) In any event, as previously mentioned, we were there for two hours. Would you like to ask me how many pictures were taken in that period of time? Would you like to guess? It may or may not surprise you I have just finished editing and looking through upwards of 200 photos! Ok...300!
Mother's Day was only three days prior and I'm not sure how many pictures were taken on that particular day but I do know it was the first time my daughters were ever at a beach and over 100 were posted on my Facebook account and at least five made their way to Instagram! So I ask you...Should help be sought in this matter? Am I alone in this epidemic? Odds are, the answer is no! Millions of people are at this very moment documenting what they are eating, drinking, what their pet is doing, and the worst offenders, taking the dreaded "Selfies", or better yet, "Twofies"...Right this very instant! Are we even present in our own documentaries? Is that possible? As a mother, I download, edit, upload, email, and save while everyone is fast asleep. If I didn't, my phone would be full to capacity!!! A few months ago, I began marketing my photos for commercial use and have over 350 pictures published and available for sale. How many have I sold you ask? One, but that's besides the point! Not every photo gets published and 350 is nothing short of impressive! Truth be told, with thousands of pictures taken on a monthly basis, that number should really be significantly higher.
The very first time my daughter was placed in my arms was the instant I wished my eyes could take pictures. That every moment could be captured with every blink so not a second would be lost! Maybe that's what it boils down to. We know time is not guaranteed us and we want to keep and look back on it all! The laughter, the cries, the curiosities, the milestones, lost teeth, ALL OF IT! And now, with Google Glasses and other gadgets, you actually can take pictures with your eyes!!!! Its bad enough how easy the upload process has become...We don't even have to "pick" a certain shot, we just simply copy and drag and viola!!!...There they all are!
It just occurred to me, when I began blogging, it was imperative it didn't become one of those boring online journals. (No offense to great and creative writers), however, it lacks framework and structure for me. If you haven't noticed, I tend to go off on tangents. As a mea culpa, if you are spending dollar after dollar on upgrading your iCloud storage accounts, you may want to utilize such sites as Shutterfly, Photobucket, and a myriad of other online storage sites as well as apps, to free up space to take even more pictures without spending a dime!
This is only a glimpse into my storage...Maybe it IS time to reach out for help;)
