Memories

We live in an interesting age where photography is booming due to societies massive desire to exploit their own lives via social media. I can remember at a very young age of 1, I bought my very first camera at a yard sale for $1. I was so very excited and actually ran home to my house to ask my parents permission to buy it even though I did use my own money. I remember my dad being hesitant about the possibility of the camera not working. He didn’t want me to waste my money but I did come home with the new to me camera and it became my obsession. First I had to bribe someone to take me to the store to buy batteries. I remember it used double AA batteries. 6 of them. Since I was going to camp the next week my dad allowed me to buy 35mm film but only let me buy 10 exposures. I think he was convinced the camera didn’t work and didn’t want me to be disappointed after paying to have the film developed. After the first two days of camp my film was used,  so I took it to the camp store and bought more film that was probably overpriced. I remember all of this so very clearly and when I finally got my pictures back after waiting what seemed like an eternity, I was ecstatic. The camera WORKED!

      Fast forward to 2017, I just got back from another life experience traveling to Israel participating in an olive harvest and experiencing things I’ll never be able to repeat. I  took my iPhone 7, Canon 60D, and gopro 4 Silver with me. I’m telling you specifics because it’s still so important to me to have good pictures, not for the sake of social media but to remember the moments I observed. My iPhone 7 had so much storage and it’s so quick and accessible almost everything goes on there. My Canon goes with me if I know I’m going to a luxurious place and I have the capability to let it rest. It’s so heavy. (Funny story: I convinced my sister to carry it up CocoHead Crater in Hawaii for me.)  My gopro goes with me if water is involved. I took pictures and videos everywhere of everything. I remember thinking about the Arabic woman that we were working with, I looked at her and saw her deep wrinkles around her head scarf, the two silver rings on her fingers, her black pants and her all-star tennis shoes. I wanted to remember that image forever in my mind so I took a picture. I also took a video of a clump of dirt in my hand crumbling down. I’m so amazed by the fertility of the dirt. It’s rock hard almost like cement, but put a seed in the ground with a bit of water and literally anything grows. There were two puppies that chased me down and licked me from head to toe. They belonged to the homeless man who lived in the field with the pet goose. I took pictures and videos of all of this. There was a garden that had every type of cactus you can imagine. Some had fuzzy spikes and others had long pointy spikes. 

    

My mind remembers it all so clearly. 

In the middle of the night, three days before I left, my phone attempted to do an update and it crashed. I lost everything. Thousands of pictures, data, messages. Everything. The pictures I returned home with are blurry gopro underwater pictures and a few beautiful pictures on my Canon. So my dilemma this past week has been coming to grips with this question: is a memory really sufficient? Maybe recording the details with words is better. In the end it all has the potential to vanish.