Snapshots

I absolutely love taking pictures. Not in the professional, make-money-for-your-pictures kind of way, but the relaxed, still, "Kodak Moments" of life that can be captured and frozen in time. It's poetic, really, to take a picture and suspend a moment. The moment can be recaptured again and again whenever it is revisited. Whenever I take pictures, I know that I am snapping little shots of the intricate details of my life that I can review again and again as reminders of who I am and where I've been and things I've done and people I've spent time with.



I also really enjoy watching other people take pictures. It's like watching a memory in-the-making. I like to look at the pictures produced. The pictures taken allow its viewers an opportunity to see life through the eyes behind the lense. I consider it a shared gift to behold what someone else found valuable enough to be worth capturing in a snapshot, worth preserving in a photo. Sharing photos is sharing the details of life that are precious enough to hold onto. And that is a very special gift to share indeed.



Time changes everything. People and places and things all change. But a photo remains. The picture cannot change. It is still and sure. Maybe this is why I respect the powerful nature of photography. I respect that my pictures tell me how it was, without question or doubt. It is fact. It is truth. It is my life in pieces. It is up to me to maintain these details as constant reminders of who I am and where I've come from. Scrapbooking has become such a huge part of my life in my endeavors to preserve my past, to enrich my present and to inspire hope for my future (LoL! CM's tagline, I know, I know! It just really makes sense to me). I want to be able to pass on my memories to the generations to follow me, not for them to simply remember me, but for them to be inspired themselves to treasure their own exsistance, documenting the stories that they will make throughout their journey. There is so much beauty yet to be kept in the snapshots of our lives and the lives to that will proceed ours. I think that is worth collecting and documenting along the way!

I'll end with a quote from one of my favorite movies - "Just Married!" When the father of the male main character spoke these words, I had to write them down because there is so much truth within them and this is why scrapbooking is important in telling the story behind the pictures . . .
"You never see the hard days in a photo album . . . but those are the ones that get you from one happy snapshot to the next."