When I'm not neglecting to take photographs altogether - like Halloween 2008, which I greatly regret - my photography skills are sorely lacking. My equipment, until I won a camera in a drawing, was limited to the technology of the camera on my cell phone. With the exception of the occasional disposable model, the camera is a device I would not have purchased on my own. There are certain truths I know about myself: I will one day OD on coffee. I am unable to resist bubble wrap. I do not take pictures. The thought rarely occurs to me. I'm too busy enjoying the goings on to remember to document them.
I have used my camera, though. Mostly for larger occasions like birthdays and Christmas, but a little bit here and there as well. It's supposed to produce higher quality pictures, but in the wrong hands, the advancements of the equipment in use make little difference. For example:
Phone
New Camera
Can you spot the remarkable difference? Nothing like blurred images in high resolution.
Whenever my grandmother would send us pictures she'd taken, there was always one picture she had accidentally taken. Always. It's like a special talent she has of snapping the shutter at the most random moment. We've seen pictures of her finger over the lens, a blurry sideways picture of my uncle on the couch, and many pictures throughout the years that were almost identical to the ones above that I took. Apparently, I inherited the gift.
This may be a subconscious reason for my forgetfulness when it comes to photography. Luckily, someone else always wants to take pictures. For a long time, I was worried that there were no pictures of my daughter's first birthday, because I know I didn't take any. I was quite relieved to find out my mom had taken the pictures. She always gets duplicates for whoever wants them, and for ten years she just hadn't ever given me my copies.
At least she had them developed. With digital photography, my pictures stay on whatever media they're captured by. My favorite Mother's Day gift was a photo album filled with two years' worth of the pictures from my cell phone. Shots of my pregnant belly, my son's newborn shots, shots of my daughter making goofy faces. It was absolutely wonderful. Some of the pictures may have looked a lot like the ones above, but hey - I doubt professional photographers get their own photos given to them as gifts.
