Do you remember how proud you were capturing all the major moments and scenes while on your last vacation? Recall the anticipation of waiting to see your photos once home? It’s all still so fresh in your mind. The trip is over, you’ve made reprints for everyone, updated the photo album or shoebox and now the whole thing begins to settle and fades into a memory.
Memories begin to fade as months or years pass, but then come to life like a dry sponge in a bowl of water as you sift and savor through past trip photos; yet something is strangely missing now. The photos start to bring alive that time of your life, yet the memories of details and specific experiences aren’t as well-connected as they once were. You continue perusing the pages of photos that chronicle the time you so well documented. You did document it well didn’t you? Then you come to realize that there seems to be missing pages in the chapters of that time you thought you had so carefully recorded. Has this happened to you?
We depart on that well-planned road trip or vacation and reach for the camera at all the obvious moments: a landmark, a sunset, the family shot or anything similar that deserves grand notation...and forget everything else. Consider for a moment, it’s the “everything else” that could be your holy grail in making your recall of that time more connected and complete years down the road when you stroll memory lane. The “everything else” can become a veritable “cerebral glue” keeping our memories more completely connected.
For example, years ago we took a family vacation to a remote cabin in Alaska. I photographed all the obvious highlights. Now, looking through these photos, I could relive the memories but there seemed to be gaps preventing me from reliving the total experience. After looking at all the photos I began asking myself questions whose answers couldn’t be rendered from the photos made. Almost like I wasn’t there because of the missing portions (no cerebral glue). What did we eat? What did the weather feel like? How did we prepare for a trip like this? What rations were made to comply with the weight restrictions of the small float plane that dropped us at the lake?
Over the years vacation photography has become much different for me now. I bring back photos, that upon first inspection, look like I was just handed a camera for the first time: Pictures of a messy picnic table or eating area, rain on windows, wet things, a shot of the duffle before stuffing it, a shot of the cabin as we moved our stuff in, shots of a packed car, loaded canoe etc. These all carry secret messages for later decoding. The result, believe it or not, is all these “between-the-scenes” photos become the links (or glue) for allowing me to completely relive memories long after they would otherwise have begun to fade. The tiny brushstrokes that connect the masterpiece scenes into a whole memory.
Think of it this way: I may photograph your face, but now I would also want to photograph your bookcase and music collection because in the future it will remind me so much more about you. Try it on your next trip. Call it photo note-taking or call it a disorder: just do it!
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Steve Smith is owner of Smith Productions LLC. For 16 years providing commercial photography and video production services and who hasn’t yet figured out what an artist statement is all about. (Sounds like a topic for a future article) Thanks for reading.
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