Positively Photos

 by Mauverneen

Me, in Prague. We climbed to the top of this multi terraced garden (I'll have to look up the name of it) the first of two such gardens that day. There was a wedding shoot going on, and when our group snuck in to take our pics against this wonderful view, someone in the professional group took our phones, posed us, and took our photos! 

Everyone knows I take photos - lots and lots of photos. I have boxes of them from when I had a film camera, and a couple more boxes from my relatives who have passed on. And now, in the digital age, I have hundreds if not thousands, stored on my computer, on camera cards, on thumb drives, on - well, you get the picture.I've been trying to clean up my digital files lately, so as to free up space on my pc, spending a little time each day on the effort. A daunting task, given my trigger finger. If I had been doing this all along, as I downloaded new batches... but I didn't, so... Going forward, I'm going to be more diligent. I have been deleting duplicates, blurry pics, and those that make me think 'why did I take that?' 

I took this during Covid. We all had a lot of time on our hands. Since I have always liked puzzles, it was a good way to pass the time, and many of us were posting our puzzle progress on FB. Do I need to save it? Not really. But it does remind me of that time and how isolated I and everyone else felt, and how we did just about anything to keep from going crazy.

On my trip to Prague and beyond, I took right around 2,000 photos. Sounds like a lot, but one of my daughters pointed out "you were there 10 days, so that's 200 a day. Not a lot for you." My kids know me well. 

I did not take this photo. I'm the one in the white jacket. One of our group was speedier to the top of the hill while the rest of us debated about going up now (it was raining) or waiting until later and hoping the rain would stop. There was the option of lunch - soup was a high priority at the moment. The rain got heavier, so we opted for lunch. The rest of us never did make it up that hill.

The point of all this is not that I take photos, but what they mean to me. Yes, they are a record, yes they are fun to look at, but to me, they are more than that. When I look at a photo that I took, I remember almost everything about it. I know where I took it, when, who I was with, and whatever little tidbit of information associated with that moment is stored in my brain. It often takes me down the rabbit hole. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's poignant, sometimes it's downright sad. But it's always like taking a little trip in a time machine. 

June 2018. My family was attending a graduation celebration and we ended up at the London House at the end of the day. It was just getting to sunset, a fog was rolling in, the air was cool, and we all sort of wandered around, taking in the view for a bit. 

Photos - A time machine. We all have our own.

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