eclecticmuses October: Write about a favorite childhood memory.
When I was little my mum bought me a play camera. It was plastic and had a long lens and a flash that popped out the top, and you had to click it to take another picture. I used to take all sorts of pictures. My dog, my feet, the backyard. My parents got used to having to stop what they were doing in order to pose for my camera, and sometimes my dad would pretend to hit himself in the head with whatever food he was preparing. I remember specifically when he accidentally knocked himself with a cucumber. I laughed for hours over that.
When I got older my mum got me a real camera, made for children and intended to withstand being dropped. Now that I could actually see the pictures I was taking I started being much more meticulous with my subjects. It took me awhile before I figured out how to get people’s heads into the frame. But my mum put them up anyway, just to show how proud she was of me. She said that I took pictures the best way, as then people couldn’t see her wrinkles.
I don’t know when I decided to stop taking pictures of people and focus on still life. But I liked it better. Capturing a single moment in time. People could make that pose again, but the way the world looked from that angle would change the moment I clicked the shutter. It would never look exactly like that again.
When I was eleven my parents and I moved out of my childhood home. The day before I packed I took pictures of my room just the way it was. Clothes strewn about, toys in disarray. It would never look like that again. I didn’t mind another girl coming to live in my room, so long as I knew she couldn’t make it look the way I did. This was my piece to take with me. I did the same for the rest of our place, and I saved all the pictures. It doesn’t make me sad to look at them. I love looking at them. It takes me back to all those wonderful memories of snapping imaginary photos of my smiling parents, my oblivious dog, my adorable toys. That’s the magic of a photo. It takes you back to that exact moment in time. The moment before was different, and the moment after was different, but for that click of the shutter, it’s magical.
When I got older my mum got me a real camera, made for children and intended to withstand being dropped. Now that I could actually see the pictures I was taking I started being much more meticulous with my subjects. It took me awhile before I figured out how to get people’s heads into the frame. But my mum put them up anyway, just to show how proud she was of me. She said that I took pictures the best way, as then people couldn’t see her wrinkles.
I don’t know when I decided to stop taking pictures of people and focus on still life. But I liked it better. Capturing a single moment in time. People could make that pose again, but the way the world looked from that angle would change the moment I clicked the shutter. It would never look exactly like that again.
When I was eleven my parents and I moved out of my childhood home. The day before I packed I took pictures of my room just the way it was. Clothes strewn about, toys in disarray. It would never look like that again. I didn’t mind another girl coming to live in my room, so long as I knew she couldn’t make it look the way I did. This was my piece to take with me. I did the same for the rest of our place, and I saved all the pictures. It doesn’t make me sad to look at them. I love looking at them. It takes me back to all those wonderful memories of snapping imaginary photos of my smiling parents, my oblivious dog, my adorable toys. That’s the magic of a photo. It takes you back to that exact moment in time. The moment before was different, and the moment after was different, but for that click of the shutter, it’s magical.