Pictures are now; nothing will ever be exactly the same as they were in that particular moment. Photographs are like clouds; you can’t save a cloud nor will there ever be two completely identical clouds. So go ahead, take that picture.

“You don’t need to take a picture, you’ll miss the moment”

First of all, forget the people who say that because you don’t need pessimistic people in your life. I personally take pictures not just because I enjoy them but because I know that others appreciate them and take joy away from them as well. I do it because I love to recreate the joys that I get from the works of others with my own work; I really just love to make others happy. Memories are cool but its more valuable to have a picture to accompany it, the photograph helps you recreate the memory in your mind more vividly. When you get older and create new memories, you’ll slowly drive the earliest memories towards the rear of your mind until they vanish completely. But if you were to have a picture to emphasize those great moments, they’ll never truly disappear.

The beauty of photographs is that they’re comparable to the notecards that you nervously clutch in your sweaty hands as your mind blanks in the midst of your freshman English class speech presentation. You try to keep rambling on but you’re nervously spinning out and profusely sweating. You glance down and finally break eye contact with the crowd of your peers—Eureka—your eyes connect with the missing word. Suddenly the rest starts flowing through your mind, like a river of knowledge rushing down into the deep ocean that is your subconscious, and as if some sort of miracle; you remember everything. It’s just like a picture, it only takes one infinitesimal photograph to jog your memory of thousands of feelings that you had during that exact moment of time. Pictures are worth a thousand words; don’t ever feel awkward or embarrassed for trying to preserve the best years of your life.

Photographs and memories go together like crackers and cheese; I very much enjoy just plain crackers, but oh boy, would I be extremely wrong if I said that the addition of cheese doesn’t make the moment 10 times better. Next time you see someone taking a picture, hold off on the coarse remarks and ask to see their final product. You never know how powerful their cheese could be. I know that I love to show others my photographs and absolutely geek out when people ask to see them. But if you don’t like taking pictures, to each his own and just realize that others live for it (myself included). You’ll miss the moment when you try to grasp the shards of it as it fades from your memory.

But you’ll really miss the moment when you remember that you didn’t take a picture.