photos

Riddle me this: If you take your kids to a free Sabrina Carpenter concert at the mall, but you do not take any pictures, did it really happen? Because we did...and I didn't, and the girls are pretty disgusted that I can't prove it. Let me check once to see if Greg took a picture.

Sure did. But for all you know, this was picture taken in our basement two minutes ago.

Anyhow, I was standing way in the back, at this concert, watching the hundreds of screaming girls and their parents who all held up their phones to record the songs. Seriously? Who wants to watch that again? And if you really want to see her sing (because she is good) why not watch a professionally made video on, say, YouTube? I just don't get it. What is our obsession with capturing every. stinking. moment?

I am no stranger to the camera, mind you. Pictures, like music, seem to mean a lot more to developing people, as they help us define who we are, how we fit in, and what we look like in various situations. In college, and after college for a bit, every singe picture I took was a variation of this:

Me, jumping on top of a group of people (in this particular case, my future sister-in-law Meredith, and her sister Melissa), and looking into the distance, acting as though I don't know my picture is being taken. I know what you're thinking...and I honestly have no idea.

One of my favorite things to do as a kid was look through our photo albums. We had about five of them, and I knew which pictures were in which album, and we'd sit on the couch and flip through them together. When we'd visit my grandparents (twice a year) I'd look through their albums and ooh and aww over how cute my mom was as a baby, and try to imagine what life was like back in the black and white days.

I have these pictures of my parents up at my house. The top one is probably the first one taken of them together--they're putting makeup on for a play they were both in at Dordt College, which is how they met, though they weren't dating quite yet as my mom was seriously dating someone else at the time. The bottom picture is taken of my dad in the army in Germany, probably the year before.

Here is the first picture taken of me and Greg. We were also in a play! No, actually we weren't, but Greg thought I was a punk-rocker because my hair was a couple different colors at the time.

In our study I feature us at the same age, side-by-side, just because I want people to see who was the cutest (rather obvious isn't it?):

All of this to say, I love looking at pictures, but I think we've overwhelmed ourselves with choices. I can look through a few albums, but I can't sit down for hours at a computer and watch my children grow up in real-time. Nor do I need to! I think we need enough pictures of our kids and ourselves to #1. capture some highlights, (here is a snapshot from the first hour after taking Elia home from the hospital. Not pictured here is me, probably crying, myself.),

#2. make some people jealous (yet to come when I post pictures from our Spring Break 2017 staycation in Holland, Michigan!), #3. put some smiling faces on our walls,

#4. laugh about our awkward phases (also, ironically, the third image to pop up if you google Greg),

and #5. throw together a wedding slideshow, but nothing more. I mean, are you going to hand your child a hard drive with 9,594 pictures on it when they move out?

I'll bet you've never heard an argument to take fewer photos, but I'm rather forward thinking, and I've always felt that the fewer images we have, the more we cherish them. Also, probably more important, I think we tend to view life through our camera lenses, and that can be really distracting. In Tiffany Wen's article, "Are You Taking Too Many Pictures?" she points to evidence suggestesting that when we use cameras to be our external memories of places and events, we don't process the memory completely. Which makes sense because divided attention, she writes, "is the enemy of memory."

What's interesting too, from this article, is that while you and I grew up taking pictures to remember events, people now are using pictures to communicate who they are and how they're feeling. It is predicted that young adults will take more than 25,000 pictures of themselves in their lifetime. Selfies allow people to put the best image of themselves on social media, and show how active, involved, busy, and connected they are. Sad? I think so, but I'm no longer a young adult, so I don't quite understand it, but it seems like an awful lot of pressure to present a perfect you.

The only time I take or post pictures is for my blog. That being said, if you were to google "Greg Schemper" here is the top image that shows up. He tries to act embarrassed, but he's got some pretty big muscles going on here:

"Elia Schemper":

"Kate Schemper":

"Sarah Schemper":

Awww! (I must have a better privacy setting for myself.)

Granted, the reason I can be so lax in taking pictures, is that I'm married to Greg. He likes to capture our children's voices and images, and the videos he's taken of them have been priceless for us! Just last week he videotaped Elia's solo at her musical and shared it with family who couldn't be there. However, the footage he's taken of people opening Christmas presents for 45 minutes, we have yet to enjoy. (Oh, we've seen it, but no one enjoyed it.)

Yesterday I got this picture in the mail from my Sister-in-law Amy:

It was taken at our Schemper reunion last summer of all the cousins, and while I'd seen it online, I had yet to print it up. I do adore pictures. I love to look at my fridge and see the faces of people I love, I enjoy scanning through pictures on Facebook of friends new and old! I just want to challenge you, and Greg, and the people standing directly in front of me at the concert, to take your pictures or videos, then put your arms down and enjoy the moment in real-time. Because what good is a picture of something that you never saw in the first place?