Get The Picture?

Taking photos has always been one of my loves in life.

As a young student and later as a mum, I captured so many precious moments with my little camera – gatherings with dear friends, our boys growing up, little family trips, fun times, and the list goes on… I have more than 40 photo albums which attest to this hobby.

And of course, this began well before the dawn of iPhones. I remember handing in the rolls of film at Boots and then, several days later, with huge anticipation, collecting the developed wallet of prints hoping there were some decent ones in amongst the blurry aberrations. My photo album collection has grown with me through the years and has become one of my most cherished possessions. In fact, I think that would be a treasure I’d grab to save if my home was ever flooded or on fire!

I loved arranging my photos in albums and I have referred to them countless times for so many reasons. It is fun to retrieve baby pictures at birthdays and to mark other occasions by digging out snaps from long ago. In fact I found some cute old photos to mark my sister’s big birthday just this week.

It’s also a joy to look back on the faces of loved ones since passed, thus breathing fading memories back into life. Photos can hold so much power, stirring all kinds of feelings. I think it’s because images speak the language of the heart, bypassing the intellectual filter of our thinking brain. The sight of an old image can suddenly evoke feelings of gratitude and love that can overwhelm us and catch us off guard. Sometimes that love can hurt a little but so often it softens our heart in a kind of healing way. Photos can also give us courage and comfort. They tell stories without words, tales which otherwise may have been long forgotten.

Physical albums tend to be a thing of the past. Nowadays we have our high tech phones with their fancy cameras and we can snap and store images all day long if we want to. It’s easy to delete ‘bad’ ones but it’s also easy for photos to get ‘lost’ in amongst the sheer volume that we take. Does this cheapen our memories? I don’t think so. If we curate and catalogue our digital collections they can be just as precious and meaningful. Our clever phone technology can even provide us with ready-made photo-memory reels at the touch of a button.

It’s relatively straightforward to share our ‘highlights’ on social media, bearing in mind that they are often a sanitised snapshot version of reality in our less than picture-perfect lives.

Some people are camera-shy. I think of my dear mother-in-law who loathed getting her picture taken. Maybe it was a generational thing of not wanting to draw attention to oneself? I don’t know. But somehow I always managed to coax her along into pausing and posing for a photo or two. She was a good sport and kindly humoured me. And I am so glad to now have those images – echoes of her life, indelible etchings which will live on through the generations – all the more precious since her passing in April this past year.

I browse back at photos of myself over the years. I’m glad that I was also in the family photos and not just the taker of the pictures. I notice that I look increasingly rounded, wrinkled and run-down nowadays. But I am still here, my essence is unchanged, and that’s worth celebrating! It’s all about perspective. Extra creases around my eyes – skin spectacles – bearing witness to health trials through which I’ve seen triumph. And so I am grateful to still have opportunity to be in the photos. Images which will hold my story long after I am here to tell it myself.

Here’s a piece by Scottish poet Donna Ashworth which sums things up nicely and has a great message to finish on.

It’s called, ‘In The Photo’.

“It’s easy to shy away from photographs because you’re so busy, so exhausted, not feeling your best. It’s easy to be the taker and never let yourself be in, when holidays make you feel exposed or less then. But one day, your loved ones will search for those memories, to bolster their own. Those pictures, no matter how you look, are set to become absolutely precious, and no one , not one of them will care how ‘together’ you appear. They will care, very much that it is you. And all of your ‘you-ness’ will be the exact gift they very much need in that moment. Be in the photo my friends. They are not for you.”

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