I’m the friend who always has their camera out. I take the planned pictures and the blurry videos. I take the candid ones where nobody knew I was looking. I take pictures of the food, the outfits, the view from the passenger seat, and the random moments nobody else thought to capture. If you’re my friend, you’re probably already in my camera roll.
For a long time, I thought this was just a habit, or maybe a hobby. But the more I think about it, the less I feel like it has anything to do with photography at all.
Some of my favorite pictures are objectively bad. They’re out of focus, badly lit, and accidentally cropped. But when I look at them, I don’t see the flaws. I see the moment, and suddenly, I’m right back in it. I remember what was so funny, who was sitting next to me, and what song was playing. A picture holds onto the little details that my memory eventually lets go of, and I’ve learned that my memory isn’t always as reliable as I’d like it to be.
That’s really why I do it. Life moves fast, and the moments I miss most are rarely the big ones. They’re the random Tuesdays, walks between classes, late-night food runs, and jokes that leave us all laughing too hard to breathe. Nobody plans those moments, and we rarely stop to appreciate them while they’re happening. They just feel like another ordinary day until, one day, they don’t. Sometimes, the moments you wish you could revisit are the ones you never thought twice about at the time.
I love scrolling through old pictures and seeing how much has changed: the haircuts, the friend groups, the places we used to go, and the version of me who had no idea what was coming next. Looking through them feels like catching up with an old friend, except that friend is a past version of myself. Some memories make me laugh, and others make me nostalgic for a life I can never experience in quite the same way again. But more than anything, they remind me how many people have shaped the person I am today.
It took me a while to realize that taking pictures of people is one of the ways I show I care. When I point my camera at you, I’m saying that this moment matters and so do you. I want to remember it, and I want us to be able to look back on it together. I’m not always trying to get the perfect picture. I’m trying to hold on to a feeling.
I don’t mind being the one behind the camera. I may not be in every picture, but I get to look back on the people I love and the moments we shared. And if taking a few extra pictures means we’ll have something to laugh about, reminisce over, or revisit years from now, I’ll keep taking them.
If you ever wonder why I’m taking a picture of something that seems ordinary, I’m not just thinking about how it looks right now. I’m thinking about how it might feel to look back on it someday.