Since I happen to like taking photographs more than is probably healthy, I was very quick to volunteer to be "Picture Mom" for cheer.
Hey. Everybody has to volunteer for something. I figured I should volunteer for something that I actually liked doing. SO BACK OFF, YO.
Anyway.
The thing about being Picture Mom is that it is an exercise in patience. No matter how many times I reposition myself, no matter how long of a lens I use, no matter what I do, I end up with this one scenario. It's the scenario where I'm sitting there with thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment, but I can't actually take a photograph of a single one of the cheerleaders because a parent is standing in my line of vision taking a picture with his or her cell phone.
It never fails. It happens EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Somebody stands at the fence that separates the bleechers from the field, and they shoot video or take pics for several minutes on end.
For the record, the scenario doesn't make me mad. It makes me sigh. It makes me sigh for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being that if *I* can't see, neither can those around me. We're all there to watch our kids and it really is lame when we can't do exactly that.
But the bigger reason it makes me sigh is because of how I view cell phone photography.
Now, chill out. I'm not about to diss cell phones. In fact, I think there are times when you can take a better photo with a cell phone than you can with a professional quality camera.
Rather, the thing that makes me twitch is what happens to *my* cell phone pics. Every once in a while I'll start to run out of room on my phone and it will be time to clean house. I scroll through photos, picking and choosing whether to delete or move to an online storage place (usually DropBox or Flickr, in case you're curious). I do a fairly good job of sorting and moving and deleting what should be deleted, but then that's it. That's the last thing I do with the pictures from my cell phone.
I don't get prints.
I don't make photo books.
Nothing.
The photos exist digitally somewhere which may or may not be accessible in 20 years, but that's it.
Is that the same for most people? Or do people who rely fully on their cell phones to capture memories take the time to get prints, make photo books, or otherwise find a way to save their photos and make them enjoyable for eternity? It seems that if that great photo you took of your kid exists only on your phone -- a phone you probably will replace in two years -- maybe it's like it doesn't exist at all.
All of those photo albums our parents made were a precious gift. And now I'm going to make it a point to make several for Alexis because, really, remembering those things only works if I remember them somewhere she is guaranteed to be able to see in several years.
