No More 3x5's

Ever since I got a camera in the eighth grade, I have carried one with me at all times. Every year I create a calendar using my own pictures that includes friends, family, and experiences. This is something I value. But without fail, I go through cycles of wanting to photograph things and wanting to experience things. Living behind a camera changes things. I now hate it when people designate me as an even photographer. What they're really doing is pushing me to the background. I come to a point where I realize I'm not actually experiencing things any more. I have had a hard time remembering events unless I have a photo of them. Sometimes this comes in handy when I need to refer to a timeline - I don't have to look back through calendars, I just have to look through my Pictures folder.

In Nabhan's A Child's Sense of Wildness, I saw my habits confronted. Thankfully, this was a trend I was already aware of. Think back through the pictures you have? Which ones do you want to look at the most? The small picture of a big mountain or the big picture of a small butterfly? I know I tend to skip over landscape pictures for the most part. And I really skip over pictures of buildings and monuments. I want to see detail. I want to see life. Those are the things that are exciting. But it's so hard to train yourself not to be distracted by the beauty of being surrounded by a snow-covered world and think, wow, I need to take a picture of that! Landscapes and things of that sort are easier to envision in your mind's eye. Close-up details can become even more vivid when you have a good photograph of them.

I hope it's clear that I don't think there's a thing in the world wrong with taking pictures. Photography is a beautiful thing. But it takes close personal moderation to keep an enjoyment of photographs from invading your ability to live your life. Children are much better at just doing than I and most other adults are. We want to capture the romantic moments that we find in a sunset. But really, those moments are so much better left to our memories and experiences.

Why take a picture of a monument? How many millions of people have taken that very same photograph? It really does come down to a personal collection. It's another box to check off. But what about that butterfly? How many people have ever even looked that closely at a butterfly? This one has a story.

I was leaving the doctor's office and my boyfriend found it on the ground. It was alive but not moving. Perhaps it was upside-down? He picked it up to try to help it get going again, but for some reason it couldn't. Its colors were so vivid, its body so weak. We kept it with us in the car as we drove home and it made a few movements but was never able to fly. Having it in the car felt simply wrong. Butterflies are made to fly. They are made to bring beauty to the air. They are meant to pollinate flowers. When we got home, we of course took it back outside. I took a photo of it upon my sister's bright red car for contrast, but that photo just makes me uncomfortable. A butterfly should never be on a car. Then I put it on the grass. The grass wasn't in the best condition, but that is much closer to where the butterfly should be. And that has become my most recent favorite photograph.