A life in pictures

I have always loved pictures. To me there is something special about capturing a single moment in time.  My husband shares this affection and has taken up photography has a hobby.  Over the past 25 years we (mostly he) have collected literally thousands of snapshots ranging from every day silliness, to life experiences both big and small, wild life in our back yard and the people that we love. While we've stored them in boxes and files on computers and clouds for safe keeping, we still find ways to incorporate them into our daily lives.

This one of Kellan is framed in our house.

 Each month Tim pulls several pictures from that same month in 2004 or 2005 and puts them on our computer as our screen saver. We all look forward to seeing what the next set of pictures will be.

We do not print a lot of our pictures unless we plan to frame them. Our house is full of candid shots in frames. I appreciate great professional photography as well.  We recently had family pictures taken that turned out wonderful, but some of my favorite pictures are candid shots we have taken. Those times when no one knew the camera was on them, the silly exchange between brothers that only they understand, or the genuine joyful smile caught by accident. To me those are the best, and when I look at them I am reminded of what is truly important.

One of my favorite pictures of Owen, and it happened accidentally!

I do not scrapbook, what I do instead is put pictures to music. I make a video each year using Windows Movie Maker. I include the highlights of our year and set it to a song that has meaning to us. I have also done these for sports teams. Our youngest son especially, will sometimes sit and watch these over and over.

We also share our photos with fellow team mates through a Flickr.com site. We take pictures of not only our son's but the other players and make them available to those who may not have another means of getting action shots of their son. Cameras can be expensive and complicated, but the good news is cell phones are using better technology for pictures than ever before. You can even set up a direct up load to Flickr so that the photos won't take up space on your phone.

Our amazing photographer caught this authentic shot of our family.

If you are not a family that takes pictures I would like to encourage you to start. Take lots of them. That is the secret to getting a few really good ones.

If you are a family who takes pictures and you are the one behind the camera, I encourage you to let someone else take a turn. Get in front of the camera every now a then. Take a "selfie" with your kids. They will thank you later.


Lastly, if you have teenagers and they are not very willing to let you take pictures of them, do it anyway. Again, they will thank you later.

Pictures can do a lot of things. They create a history, a time line of sorts for our lives. They allow you to relive events in your life, sometimes with the same kind of emotion. When we look back, we can also see our present and even a glimpse of our future.  When I look back and realize just how quickly the time has gone it makes me sad at times.  But, in the same sense it makes me appreciate the present and look forward to the future. We can't stop time or turn back the clock, but we can document moments of our lives, both big and small in pictures.