By Nina Badzin
I remember how the cost of taking pictures used to add
up quickly, and how tedious it was to keep track of your film. On my teen tour
in Israel in 1993, for example, I was always judicious as my finger hovered over
the shutter. I would never have considered snapping a picture of every person on
my trip standing in front of the same stack of rocks on Masada. Who had the
time, energy, money, and interest in developing all of those pictures? Did I
want to load a new roll of film in the middle of a hike? The advent of the
digital camera feels like a curse. Taking pictures is such a regular part of our
lives that my 6-year-old asks to see shots immediately and requests I take new
ones if she doesn’t like something about the picture. And since I have four
kids, it should come as no surprise that I am drowning in digital photos. I
expected to have the classic situation of endless pictures of my oldest child
and next to nothing for my youngest. Instead, I have an obscene amount of
pictures of everyone, and I don’t know how to manage them all. Recently, when I attempted to put the pictures into folders on my computer, I got half-way through the project before I realized the main problem was not how to organize the pictures (though that is a beast of a task). The real issue here is training myself not to take so many pictures in the first place. It’s a chicken-egg problem. My files wouldn’t be so out of control if I took smarter pictures from the get-go like I did on Masada in 1993.
Based on the many pictures I deleted as I was putting our photos into digital folders, I would like to share some picture-taking wisdom with my fellow Jewish parents.
PICTURES YOU DON’T NEED
1. You don’t need 20 pictures of yourself from every angle during each month of your pregnancy.
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