A Case for Exhaustive Photography

I have almost 450 videos and 2500 pictures of Andrew, including 120 pictures from this day alone. And yet every time I look through my files, I wish I had taken more. I wish I had 1000 from this day, because it's one of my favorite ways to remember him. I wish I had hundreds of thousands. Heck, I wish I had five months worth of constant high definition video.

I think this is why I love photography....because you can capture a moment that can never be retrieved. Obviously not everyone has issues like we did with Andrew, but it's still just as important. Your kid/dog/grandmother/sister is only going to look exactly like that once; if you don't record it, you may have to rely on fuzzy memories later. The only difference is that we can't go into the nursery and update those memories with a current view.

Even if there's not a person in the picture, your memory of a time and place can still be triggered by a picture. There are tourist destinations I've been to a few times (Paris, Venice, Athens, Rome), but the pictures from each trip evoke entirely different memories, even if they're of the same monuments. Even if you're never going to print/post/frame/hang the picture, just taking it then looking at it yourself later is worth the effort. Trust me. Every time I stumble across the picture above, it's worth it.