why i take pictures of literally everything and everyone

Anyone that knows me personally knows about the unconditional love I have for my cameras.

My entire bookshelf is not only lined with novels I’ve read, but also all the cameras I’ve used to document the various phases of my life.

I have my broken Canon g7x in its light pink case that has captured some of my greatest memories, a Nikon I took photos on when I was only 5 years old and could hardly reach the counter it rested on, high above my head. There’s a Coolpix with a scratched lens that I take to every party I attend, and multiple disposable cameras who’s photos turn out blurry 50% of the time, but I cherish nonetheless.

I could be running 30 minutes late and still take an extra 10 just to search for where I placed the camera I have my heart set on bringing to the lake, dinner, friend-outing, ski trip or hike.

If I could only choose a few objects in my burning house to save — it would be my cameras.

I truly believe that without photography and the ability to capture moments in time — times where you’re laughing with the people you love, jumping into Peach Beach, smiling with your little sister, or reading in the sun — human life becomes a stop-motion film of lost memories.

Even the small in-between moments are special to me. The ones where you take a picture of your friends unexpectedly: the flash goes off, and everyone starts laughing and you see the beauty of life in each of their smiles. They pose and hold each other tightly to portray the fact that love exists in every single shutter-frame, and will live on forever because of its infiniteness. Unlike the linearity of human life, photos are portals to various time periods, and will be something that my grand-children, or great grand-children will look back on.

Even I look back on the thousands of photos I’ve taken from time-to-time, and I watch the beauty of my life unfold.

I watch as people phase in and out of my life like ghosts. I watch as experiences that have left impressions on the way I perceive things now flicker through my fingers like sand as I use the cam-scroller to zoom through, photo after photo. I tend to get emotional, as though I can recall the way I felt in every single memory my cameras have captured.

I look at photos of my ex-best friends and my stomach twists but I savor the experiences and the love I still have for them, and I watch the videos I took while I sing song lyrics with people that I see every day, or jump ocean waves at the coast with.

Some of the pictures bring back memories I would have completely forgotten if I hadn’t taken the photo to begin with, which only inspires me to take even MORE photos.

I don’t want to forget anything about what I did or who I loved. I want my furture children to have a sense of who their mother was, and I think above all else, I just want my life to hold some intrinsic meaning within the flash of my camera lense.

Sophia Rundle