Every summer on our family vacation my mother would say "One, two, three, cheese" and snap a photograph. My siblings and I always hated being in the pictures and wondered why my mother still made us be in the picture. So why did my mother insist on making us be in the picture? She wanted us to be able to recall every place we have traveled to and capture the memory. The fact we take photographs is a sign we want to preserve our memories.
Memories with family and friends can be remembered by taking photographs. Photographs aren't just for the sake of having but they also have great personal meaning and are central to how we may view our own lives. Naturally a human's memory does not have the ability to recall all events from the past. As a result photos are symbols we use to capture good and bad times, new and old experiences, or the beauty of a person or event. I love taking pictures to preserve my memories which are special to me because this allows me to recollect the memories. As a child, my parents took tons of pictures of my childhood events and made many photo albums. I am able to look at the albums and remember all the funny, happy or sad events in my childhood. One of my favorite memories is my 5th birthday party. I was dressed up as a queen and we had a parade. It was so much fun but without the pictures I would not be able to reminisce about my childhood. .
On my trip to Paris last summer, we were visiting the Louvre and went, of course, to see Leonardo da Vinci's painting of Mona Lisa. People crowded around the painting to behold this most famous of all portraits in person. We had all seen photos of the painting, but here we could see the real thing and contemplate why it was so special and feel the presence of the actual work of the hand of a most remarkable individual. As we entered the room I began thinking, is there a problem with these people? Surely their pictures will be nowhere near as "good" as those we could get on any postcard or book.
