Pictures are weird.

I've always hated being in pictures, but I wish there were more of my everyday life growing up (including my 20's) to show my son. Digging through my grandparents house and seeing 1000's of photos of fireworks, parades, etc I know what you mean, just enjoy it. But slice of life photos of my grandpa being a young father to my mom and aunts/uncles gives an interesting perspective I'm very glad was captured.

I spent a few weeks in Japan years ago and my favorite photos are the ones with me and other people just bullshitting around. There are probably 1000 photos of mountains, temples,paths, and animals that are essentially meaningless now. I've tasked myself on my last few vacations to ask for more photos, and to try and get as many candid ones as possible, while refraining from taking a bunch of "desktop background" photos I'll never use.

A concern I have now is many of those slice of life photos are being lost to cloud services that shut down (is flicker a thing? did it ever have an e?) or deliberately destroyed as part of snapchat's principle design. I'll get off my soapbox and let be, and just get some hardcopy photos so when my son is digging through my house, maybe he sees something equally interesting.

I'll always remember this really sad story I read somewhere. An old couple had rented early video-recording equipment for a trip to the grand canyon. They took videos of the canyon, and some of the videos included brief accidental glimpses of their young kids in the periphery. Decades later, those glimpses are priceless and precious to the old couple, whereas the videos of the canyon are worthless. "Why did we aim the camera at those stupid cliffs?! Our kids were right there! If only this shot was one more inch to the left..."

For this reason, I almost always ask my wife or kids, if they are with me, to get into the frame if I am photographing nature or a building or something. Maybe not every time, but most of the time. I figure that some day I will enjoy looking at them more than whatever other thing it was that I was taking a picture of at the time.

Snap a photo and then continue experiencing it in the moment. Not sure why it has to be one or the other.