Surveying the crowd at a concert last Friday night, I was
startled to discover that what I thought at first were lighters-held-aloft (80’s-style!)
were actually thousands of cell phone screens, all lit up and actively at work
videotaping, selfie-ing, and otherwise recording the experience in “real time.”
This is the world we live in. You aren’t really somewhere until you’ve posted that you’re there on Facebook or
Instagram—or at least saved a few quick snaps to your iCloud. And let’s be honest…I
did it too. I tried to take a selfie with my pals to mark the exciting occasion
of being out on a Friday night and sharing in the spectacle of live music. Our selfie
was a bust (it was too dark and we just came out looking like humps of flesh
with teeth and eyes), but we got caught up in trying to capture the moment rather than just enjoying it.
These days we record everything—and then there’s the
posting. We’re constantly whipping out our phones (with super enhanced
photographic capabilities and huge amounts of internal memory) to catch every
little thing. Here’s the half-glass of wine I have left in my glass! Here’s the
gum I just stepped in on the bottom of my shoe! Here’s some random guy’s mullet
that I just had to sneak a photo of while he was gnawing on an ear of corn!
Snap, snap, snap!
Back in the old days (like the 90’s) photos and videos used
to be about preserving memories, about capturing the very most important and
special family moments for posterity, for future generations. Back when
photography was first invented, you were lucky to be captured once or maybe
twice in your entire life in a photograph.
Let’s just hope it was a good hair day.
Which leads me to my current dilemma. I’m way behind in my
family photo albums. Photos are piling up everywhere—on my phone, my real
camera (yes, I still have one! It’s digital! I’m not using real film or
anything), in my email inbox and all over my computer—iPhoto, Shutterfly,
SmugMug. The digital footprint of my family is everywhere out there…piling up,
unorganized, chronologically incorrect, unfiltered and unedited. This does not
even take into account what’s happening beyond my control on Facebook,
Instagram, SnapChat and Twitter.
I’m overwhelmed. Every time a kind friend, family member,
acquaintance, or teacher passes along an amazing shot of one of my kids doing
something (of course) amazing—I break out into a cold sweat. That’s one more
photo that I’m not cataloging, organizing, filing properly. Somehow, in the
course of quickly catching a photo of my boys on their way to the first day of
school, I need to get ahead of this mounting mountain of memories. I am a
hyper-organized person, with files set up inside the files in my email inbox. I
make binders with dividers and plastic sleeves. I keep lists and I actually
draw little check-boxes. But this? These photos? How’s a person supposed to
keep up?
And don’t even get me started about the videos. When the
children were little, we enthusiastically recorded every “Happy Birthday song,”
every soccer goal, every learning-to-master-something moment. Of course, video technology
was continuously changing, so I’ve got big tapes, little mini tapes, DVD’s, and
some random cartridges, all containing our young family at its best. At some
point, I abandoned videotaping completely. I wish I did have video of a few
things, like maybe my dad pretending to trip with a birthday cake in his hands,
or that time my high school dance team won the National Championship. On the
other hand, I’m thrilled that there’s no haunting evidence of that trip I took
to Cabo with a bunch of beach volleyball players, or of that time I decided to
sing Desperado with the band in a dive bar on the Santa Monica pier. That’s a
good miss. For everyone. (And really, I’m still sorry for those of you who had
to hear it live.)
But I do care about the photos, the good ones, the shots
that captured the moments we want to crawl back into. I used to make elaborate photo
albums and baby books, diligently cutting and annotating while my babies were
napping and the house was quiet. But then, I started running out of time. The
soccer team would send a link with 832 photos from the fall season. Who has
time to search through them all for the three of my own child? So, I got behind
and then I got panicked into immobility.
I’ve decided that I need to catch up. I’m considering scratching those three years that I missed and just picking back up from today. I’ll create little folders on my desktop with smart labels like “Sports 2016” or “Halloween” or “Mother’s Day”. That way, when the photos arrive, I can just file them in the right spot and at the end of the year, upload everything, all set, into a nice album and press “Order.” That would work, right? I’ll still have to weed through the toothy selfies from the concert the other night, but hey, that’s a moment worth remembering too.