Occasionally, it occurs to me that when my son is older, he’ll look back on millions of photos capturing his life but very few that include me, particularly post-separation. I then try to right this by taking a selfie of us, but I suck at selfies and they often end up being hyper-close-up shots of the two of us in almost identical poses, side-by-side and faces squished to fit the frame with little visual context of place or event being captured. I’d like to get better at this, but in the mean time, it’s probably easier to recruit others to take pics of us like I did on our recent camping trip, with our camp neighbour Ann obliging, and lingering for a chat.
I learnt that Ann, who is in her early 80s, is an intrepid camper. Following her husband’s death 8 years ago, she found a new lease on life when she joined an online, solo-women-only posse of caravan adventurers.
‘It’s better than staring at the four walls of my unit.’ She said.
Ann and her friends, who are either single, widowed or leave their partners at home, make many trips around Australia each year. On the trip where we met, however, Ann was camping with her family.
A photo with a story not only in front of the camera, but also behind the camera — maybe I won’t bother trying to perfect the selfie!
How do you capture and store memories in this age of click and forget?
This little ramble was inspired by my micro story below, which was inspired by Sonya’s photo prompt — Three Line Tales 19 January 2023. If you’d like to read more than three lines of my writing, check out: raptorial.substack.com
Warrior 101
Dark plumes billowed from the funnels of the Ocean Spirit and rose to meet the cranes that stretched in complex asanas above stacks of shipping containers in shades of industrial chic. Josie was pleased with the surreptitious photo opportunity she’d stumbled upon on the tourist trail; she smiled and threw deuces at the device resting on the end of her selfie stick. The ship’s foghorn let out a long blast that cut through clangs of steel and squawks of seagulls seeking dinner as Josie tried a few more angles, stopping only when she lost her footing and noticed that she, and the Ocean Spirit, were gliding away from the dock.
Work in Progress 
Hopefully she is still attached to the Ocean Spirit…
My problem with all these digital photos is that I never get around to printing them out. When my girls were young they used to love looking through the photo books (this was all pre-digital). Who loves looking through digital photos? I fear our lives will be lost in the cloud. (K)
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I hope so! Yeah, it’s such a treat to look through old pics. I get into a panic about storage … I recently subscribed to google to get more than thr standard 15G and now I’m already almost exceeding 100, which annoyingly impacts my ability to download google docs to my phone to print and even send and receive emails.
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I store my photos on a portable drive attached to my computer…but of course I have a desktop, which many people don’t have.
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Yeah, I generally do that to but ever since absent mindedly optimg for google photos backup on my hone, I haven’t been prompted by full phone memory to downoad. I’m also a sucker for the reminders of ‘this day 3 years ago’ or ‘featured wednesday’ etc that google sends, bringing back old memories. Leaning toward a film camera in the near future!
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I don’t trust the phone to have any more of my data than absolutely necessary. Showing my age…
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Showing your wisdom 🙂
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This is one reason I ended up buying an actual camera almost a decade ago because I wanted “real pictures,” not the ones that come from cell phone 😉
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Yeah, I think I’ll have to do the same. Perhaps film camera to be more intentional with shots and to print them. One of the cafe’s here has a film drop off service, so it couldn’t be easier!
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