The joy of photos

I’ll be spending some time today compiling the calendars we give to some family members as Christmas presents (apologies for the spoiler if any of you are reading this though it shouldn’t come as a surprise given that you’ve received them for the past 14 years or so!). These consist of nothing but photos of my daughter, niece and nephew and it’s a task I love doing as it always brings back recent happy memories. Frequent readers will know I often write about appreciating the simple things in life and this is a prime example – enjoying the joy that revisiting photos brings.

A few recent examples highlighted the importance of this to me. In conjunction with the recent Remembrance Day memorial, my mum shared some wonderful old pictures of my nan and grandad (as my grandad took part in the D-Day landings and my mum was reminiscing). We recently had a party to celebrate my mum & dad’s Golden Wedding anniversary and each table included some lovely pics of them from their wedding day back in 1971. Just this week, my brother-in-law shared a picture in our ‘Jolly Boys’ WhatsApp group (the name we give to the group we have with our friends) of a football team back from our school years which included a couple of the group, which in turn led to talk of happy memories from years gone by. This is what looking back on photos does (for me, at least) – it makes me happy. It makes me smile. It makes me recall memorable moments from my life that I may have temporarily forgotten

The real positive these days is that taking photos is so ridiculously easy to do, given the quality of the cameras on our mobile phones. Storing and sharing them is also easier than ever. There are plenty of online storage options which make sharing with family and friends ridiculously simple. Also, rather than taking photos and filing them away for years without viewing them, there are now so many options to view. Our TVs, laptops and tablets have dedicated viewing modes and we are able to set up slideshows as wallpapers with ease, meaning that we can frequently relive those memories.

So, there really is no excuse, unless you hate photos…  Take lots of them. Understand the capabilities of the camera on your phone (if that’s what you use) and snap away on a daily basis. I do and I probably end up deleting 75% of them, though the 25% that remain make it all worthwhile. Please don’t care what people think – snap away and capture people and places as often as possible. You’ll be glad you did when you come to look back on them at some point in the future.

As always, thanks for reading, stay safe and be kind to yourself and others. But especially yourself.

Best wishes.

Mick

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