Search This Blog


There's one I want on the top shelf...

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Worth A Thousand Words

I am a picture fiend. Even before cell phones had cameras, I carried a camera around with me at all times to take hundreds of snapshots a year--and that was back in the days of film. When Keilana was eight weeks old, she had been professionally photographed six times. One of my students used my on-line picture posting to do the math, and came up with this astounding figure: In her first year of life, Scarlett had her picture taken ten thousand times. That’s one thousand times ten. I told you, I’m fixated. I thought it would get better when I got a digital camera three years ago and could use the technology to raise my standards for pictures of my kids--keeping only the perfect ones and discarding the weird face or out-off-focus shots we used to be stuck with. Nice try. I have found what happens now is that I take exponentially more pictures, but can’t discard any of them. Even if I’ve managed to catch only my child’s blurry elbow, it’s still one of my very favorite elbows ever and I want to be able to look at it whenever I choose. Besides, their elbow will never be that age again. Disturbing, isn’t it? Another consequence of my addiction is that my kids become junior photographers very early on. Connor could take professional-looking shots by four and Scarlett is catching up fast. In Gary Soto’s Snapshots from the Wedding, Maya shows off her skills. They aren’t half bad.

http://www.amazon.com/Snapshots-Wedding-Paperstar-Book-Gary/dp/0698117522

http://www.garysoto.com/bio.html

No comments:

Post a Comment