I used to make scrapbooks. Like actual physical photo albums. And they were amazing.
Not neatly decorated ones, just simple collections of photos. I get it honestly. If you walked into my paternal grandma Lola’s house growing up you would find stacks of old family photo albums. I used to love looking through those things when I would come over. Honestly, it was like peering into a time capsule. Suddenly I was transported back to the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, back to a time when afros were huge, bell bottoms were in, and I caught a glimpse of a world that existed before my time. Since she passed, my dad has now inherited that collection of albums. I assume I’m next in line.
I started my own collection in high school. Something about the stretch between my junior and senior year urged me to document what was happening. This was before social media or camera phones, so all I had was a disposable Kodak camera. I started bringing one along to mark the occasions: prom, summers in Charleston, Friday night lights and Saturday band competitions. Before I knew it, I had aquired multiple albums of some of my best highlights of the late 90s, SDW3 edition.
I really upped my game in college. After a disastrous semester chasing a string of failed relationships, I fell hard for a brilliant and sophisticated young lady named Samantha Wright. For the rest of that year we were inseperable. I made an entire album of our first spring break trip to New York (just months after 9/11). Most of it contains pictures of us cuddled up together, ice skating in Central Park, singing with our school’s gospel choir in Harlem, shopping in Manhattan. If you look back on us in these early pictures, you’ll notice two things: how young we were and how joyful we seem. As young people in love, we had the whole world ahead of us.
That’s what I love about pictures; they freeze a moment in time you can revisit over and over again.
The albums continued through our dating years and into marriage. But as the digital age gave way to social media, my approach changed too. The last physical album I made was our trip to Jamaica, also our last big trip before kids. We were still in our late 20s, and it was our first international trip together.
By the time my wife was pregnant with our first daughter, I’d fully gone digital. So much so that when we learned we were pregnant, I started my first blog (Riley’s Dad) and had purchased a Sony Handycam HD to videotape everything. I haven’t stopped (blogging) or videotaping ever since. The girls have grown up in a home where I document a lot. Just on this current west coast trip alone we’ve collectively compiled over 400 pictures and videos in just under two weeks thus far.
That’s a ton of content.
Over the years across our private family Youtube and Vimeo channels, we’ve compiled hundreds of home movies of our adventures, including trips, birthdays, weddings, family reunions, etc. Every “first” you can imagine, including first walks, teaching the girls to ride their bikes, teaching my daughter to drive, first days of school, etc are also captured on camera. Like I said, it’s a lot of content.
For a time we shared some things on social media (on my instagram or my wife’s instagram), but honestly that became exhausting for both of us to manage. There’s something about the incentives of social sharing: you start focusing more on how others will perceive the moment than on simply capturing it as it unfolds. I found myself becoming a spectator of my own life, a paparazzo of my own family, rather than a participant who just happened to catch a candid shot. So we stopped sharing on those platforms. Besides, the point of documenting all of these memories wasn’t primarily to share with the outside world anyway. It was always for our own entertainment and celebration.
Yes, we’re that family who cuddles up in the family room and binge watches old family videos for an hour past bedtime. It brings me so much joy that the girls love riding down memory lane with me. And I’m so thankful that the gift of capturing memories was passed down to me.
While here in California it seems that perhaps one of my daughters might be ready to take up the mantle. She’s contributed an impressive number of photos to our shared album. She even already made a mini video of the first week of our travel. It looks like the baton might be passed soon, and I get to be just another participant again.
SDW3
A few of my favorite moments from our trip thus far…
everyday fatherhood 