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I was lamenting to a friend today that I had stalled in my weight loss, primarily because I have not improved my diet and have been relying on exercise alone for results. That led to a discussion about our self-image and our feelings on being photographed, and then a general discussion about taking pictures of things.
I tend to take a lot of pictures--not of myself, but of things around me. I take pictures of the sky. I take pictures of plants. I take pictures of city skylines. I take pictures of lighted shop signs with burned-out letters. I take pictures of friends playing arcade games. Sometimes I take pictures of things I don't know anything about, just in case I might be interested in them later.
Most people think of photographs as something we use to remember something special. We take pictures of weddings, birthdays, vacations, concerts, and sports events. We don't take pictures of the clothes in the bedroom or the pile of dishes in the kitchen. We don't try to document the papers strewn on the office desk, the aisles of the local grocery store, or insides of our cars. But to me, in this age of cheap mass storage for keeping an almost-unlimited number of pictures, those things are exactly what we should be photographing more.
We see our bedrooms and kitchens every day, our cars several times a week, the grocery store maybe once or twice a week. These things are constantly in our minds and in our lives. As a result, we get used to them, and we stop paying close attention to them. They become part of the background of daily life; they become things we take for granted. We don't really think about them until something changes--we paint the bedroom a new color, we buy a new car, or the grocery store undergoes a renovation to get rid of that ugly yellow tiling.
We get used to the change, and the memory of the old configuration fades fast. And once we're used to the change, we stop thinking about it again.
My wife and I have moved four times in the last five years. Every now and then we'll start talking about some aspect of a previous residence that we enjoyed, such as the balcony of the first apartment we shared, or the Pump It Up machine we stuffed into the cramped basement of our first house. Sometimes we can find a picture about it a reminisce. Other times, we can't find a record of it at all.
The big events stick out in our memories. We don't need to look at pictures to remember how special our wedding day was, or how much we enjoyed the Kpop concert we saw in Chicago, or how cute the turtles at the aquarium were. But we sometimes struggle to remember the layout of a childhood house. We remember fondly our first cars in high school, but we can't quite recall what the dashboard looked like. And in my experience, it's when I find pictures of those mundane, everyday experiences that the greatest number of memories come flooding back.
I say take pictures of ordinary things. Take screenshots of everyday stuff you do on your computer or phone. Save a photograph of your dirty kitchen or your cluttered office desk or the cracked plastic on your car's dashboard. Many years from now, those might be the photos you most appreciate having.
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[Last updated: 2021-10-28]