love thursday: getting the love on paper

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about making sure to actually print photographs -- and concluded that I was going to make a concerted effort to create albums of my photographs, so that in the event storage media changed over time (as it most assuredly will), I would always have a record of my life in paper form -- sort of like a time capsule for myself, for Alex, and for Alex's kids, if she ever had any.

Not surprisingly, I have not made one album since that post. 

That's not to say that I wasn't committed to printing my images:  I was.  I am.  But right after I wrote that post, I started trying to figure out what kinds of albums I would buy, and how many pages they should be, whether they should be large or small, and then I just got all overwhelmed by the amount of work that printing and mounting those photographs would be, and then ...

... anyway.

So after thinking about it for a bit more, I realized:  Dude.  I'm an avid journaller -- I write in my journal every day.  Maybe, what I needed to do was just print my favourite shots -- once a week, say -- and then just stick them in my journal.  No rhyme or reason, just choose my favourites I'd taken during the week, print them in 4x6 form, and add them to my journal.  Maybe write a caption, if I was moved to.  And I'm happy to report that so far, so good:  they're haphazard, and the pages are in no way lovely, neat creations, but whatever -- for me, they definitely do the job.

Then, about a week and a half ago, I came across this post by Ali Edwards, about her habit of taking self-portraits using the "PhotoBooth" software on her Mac computer. "Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands (or click a button on your computer)," she says, "to make sure you’re visually included in the stories you’re telling."

I love this point.  Since I'm the photographer in our family, I tend to always be the person behind the camera -- which means that we have a great history of the love between Marcus and Alex.  But there are very few images of Marcus and me, or Alex and me; and other than our annual family portraits for our Christmas cards, there are even fewer of all of us.  Maybe, as Ali pointed out, it's time to take matters into my own hands.

So I've decided, every few weeks or so, to start using Photobooth to capture images of Alex and me, Marcus and me, and the three of us.  The shot above is the first.  And when I take these photos, I'll print them out with my other favourite photographs that I take, and add them to my journal.

Just to visually include all of our love in the stories I record in my journal.

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Happy Love Thursday, everyone.  Maybe today's the perfect day to grab a snapshot with someone who's important to you.

Update:  Speaking of self-portraits, be sure to check out the project we're going to be doing over at Own Your Beauty.  Also? Today's the last day to enter The Beauty of Different giveaway -- so if you haven't entered, go leave a comment!

Image:  Alex and me, October 26, 2010.  Photographed with the Photobooth software on my Mac.

Song: World spins madly on by The Weepies