Why I take pictures.
What do you take photos of? If you sifted through your photos what would you find? Perhaps, birthdays, weddings, holidays, family vacations………How about your daughter brushing her teeth? Or your son mowing the yard? Would you find photos of your messy living room and piles of laundry? What about images of yourself doing everyday tasks like making coffee or putting on makeup?
Think about all the little mundane, day to day occurrences that we don’t even remember. Sometimes when I look at a photo I think to myself ‘hmmm, I don’t even remember when this was taken’. So think about all the other memories that have already been lost that were NEVER caught on film to begin with.
Sometimes, when I look at my daughter I have mixed emotions. What I mean is that there are some things I wish she would be grown up enough to do on her own. For example, wash her own hair, or be fully potty trained or be able to entertain herself for hours so I could get some work done already! But, then again I don’t want her to grow up because I love how she calls pancakes ‘pantcakes’ or when she sings “You are my sunshine” she sings at the top of her lungs ‘you make me happy when skies are grapes’. So in a vain effort to remember these little everyday moments I take pictures. Lots of them. Hundreds and thousands of them. Recently I have been busy capturing memories for other people and haven’t had as much of a chance to take pictures of my own family.
Yesterday I came across something interesting. Really, really interesting. There was a guy, Jamie Livingston, who started this project in college and continued it until his passing in 1997. He took a Polaroid photo of something virtually everyday from 1979-1997. There are even photos of him on the day of his death. A lot of the photos are of friends, family and just things he saw and liked. He captured people, places, things, moments and his life. The photos are ordinary but when you look at them as a whole it is extraordinary. Here is the photo he took on the day of my high school graduation May 27, 1994. http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/94/05/05-27-94_std.jpg And here is a link to the blog with all the photos on it. photooftheday.hughcrawford.com
If you have time you should check it out. It really is amazing and beautiful.
So as I struggle to do exactly what Jamie Livingston found so easy I remind myself that’s it’s o.k. to have photos of birthdays and family vacations, but I’m going to try harder to capture the little things too.
My daughter is watching Dora on TV….if you’ll excuse me I need to grab my camera. 
