I am a busy working mom. I could strap myself to my computer for a week straight and I’m not sure I would get caught up. There are always things I need to do for Fresh Art, for our church, school, friends, family, you name it. I am constantly editing photos for other people and so my own hide in the dark corners of my external hard drive or even deeper on my online back-up service and never see the light of day. They rarely get edited much less printed or hung on my walls. And because my to do list at my desk is ever growing and never ending I’ve been finding myself more and more reluctant to take those every day shots around my house. I still drag my big camera on most outings we do with the kids so it’s not like our life isn’t being documented but those tiny moments that happen within our small white house are being mostly missed. I do use Instagram a lot and that’s great, but at such a low-resolution I will never do much with my iPhone photos.
The other day I picked up my camera for two minutes. I went and found the only kid at home and took less than 10 photos. I kept even less than that. I took a few minutes to edit them, file them away and get a few ready to blog. The entire thing took me less than an hour. The moment was less than five minutes long though. One hour to capture 2 minutes. That is my sticking point most days. And these aren’t shots I will frame big on my walls. They are ones that will get put in our yearly photo book if I ever make it (2010 was our one and only year I printed a book!).
HOWEVER.
When I look back through the folders and folders of images on my computer it’s not the shots I took at the zoo or on Christmas morning or on vacation that tug at my heart strings. It’s the ones in our house. Doing everyday things. Doing not much of anything, really. Those are the ones that pull memories out of my too cluttered mind and I can almost FEEL my kids at that age. I can smell their damp Johnson’s shampooed heads. I can taste the diaper cream that seemed to be everywhere all the time. I can hear their little voices calling to me or playing with each other or even screaming. These simple every day shots are the ones I will hold tightly to as I get older. And they are the ones that I think they will treasure the most too.
