The Importance of Taking Pictures

If you only do one thing today, let it be to tell someone you love them and take a picture with them.

Top 5 Reasons to Take More Pictures

• Memories fade – As much as we would like to think we would remember a special moment forever, the sad truth is that most of our memories fade with time. Our pictures help us to remember the times we never want to forget.
• Pictures bond.  They give us roots and history.  It is always nice to have the pictures to go with all of the fun, crazy stories.
• It creates a visual history for future generations.
• Pictures are priceless treasures.  When people lose everything in a house fire, that is the one thing that is irreplaceable to them.
• Life can change in an instant. I hear countless stories of people who either just had pictures made before life changing news, tragic accident, or death and people who missed the moment before it passed to be gone forever. My brother told me one time that there are no guarantees in life and that we are only guaranteed the moment we have right now. He found out he had a brain tumor within a year and was dead within four years. There are no guarantees, so never wait for the perfect time. It may not come. And if it does, then you can just take more pictures, but meanwhile you have pictures that you may not have another opportunity to get. Trust me. I know. I write this just a few steps away from my precious mother who is near death as I am wearing a sweater that I purchased for her a year or two ago for us to do pictures. She wanted to feel better first. Better days never came.

I’m so glad I got this picture of us together last year.

She died last week just barely over a year after I took this picture. As I finish up this article that I started earlier this month, it is her birthday today.  She would have been 89 years old today.

I had no idea it would be the last one of us together…ever.

While it was not the amazing, professional picture I had hoped for, I now treasure it. I still can’t help but think what pictures I would have of us together today if she would have realized there would not be better days ahead.

How to handle people not wanting their picture taken or not liking the way they look in pictures.

Tell them their perspective will change in ten or twenty years. As they get older, they will most likely look back on an image that they did not like of themselves when they were younger and absolutely love it fifteen years later.

We can probably come up with many reasons for not taking pictures.

• I’m having a bad hair day.
• I’m not in the mood.
• I will miss too much of what is going on because I will be behind a camera.
• Everyone hates it when I take out my camera because they hate to have their picture taken.
• So and so never likes how they look in pictures and always complains.

These reasons pale in comparison to why we should be taking pictures.

The more pictures you take, the better. Especially in the age of digital where you can take pictures without the cost of film and developing.  The one word of caution I give here is to actually print your pictures and back them up…several places including off site in case of a fire.

Take lots of pictures.  The perfect one you want could be the very next picture you take. Or the very next picture you take could be the last chance you would ever have.

~Tammy Cobb