My precious

'i have a journal of my pregnancy. But after the baby I have no journals. The photos and videos tell the story' said a friend of mine. I love taking pictures. Have always loved it. Taken after my dad says my mom. But did my dad take pictures at all? If you compare it in numbers with this age then one can say that he was a stranger to photography.
I remember us having a camera with a film roll. We could take 36 pictures with a roll if I remember right. 'dont waste! We should save it for the right moment' I've heard my dad often say. it used to be very annoying,especially when you think everything you do is worthy enough to be a part of those 36 pictures.
The camera was kept in a neat pouch and was taken out only on special occasions. Well actually everytime it came out was like an occasion for us. It used to be an exciting event like a thiruvuzha. My brother and I (me definitely) would get ready with 600 poses and different smiles that should be captured. Appa would take a few pictures of us doing all kinds of faces and that's it. He would then head out to our garden with me hovering around him trying to persuade him to take more pictures of me everywhere around the house. I Vividly remember the smile he would give when I used to hound him thus. he would then take some more pictures of me and say the film was over. I am sure he capitalised on my weakness in math because I never wondered how the film would be over after just a few photos.
When the film roll was truly done, we would wind it up to roll it back before taking it out and giving it for print. Then the printed photos would come wih an album and we would pour over every single photo commenting on every aspect of it.there are only a handful of albums in my house. That's how many pictures we've taken until the digital camera came into being.
Even then we had to have a computer at hand to transfer from the memory chip. So even though we could take more pictures, it was still restricted by the size of the memory card. When I went to the Himalayas and my camera ran out of memory space before I even reached the pass, I once again remembered my dad saying 'dont waste! We should save it for the right moments'. I do not have any pictures of saurkundi pass now. At least I have a countable number of photos which I go through once in a while.
Now with smart phone cameras everyone is a photographer and obsessively so. I take pictures left right and center. Every moment seems precious and worth capturing. It is easy to just plug a wire and transfer the pictures into the computer. even with this,i ran out of memory today. when thiran did something new Today I reached out to my phone only to realise I had no space to take more pictures or videos. another moment to be reminded of what my dad used to say.
Today I have a hard drive full of pictures. Memories that are so many that I do not have the time to sift through. Some I ve forgotten why they were taken,some events have too many pics that one gets tired of seeing and many are just pictures of me and my family members over and over again in different poses.
I should just choose my precious moments to capture and remember I guess.