Page V

On “What was the last completely ordinary thing you photographed and why did you take a picture of it?”

I take photos all. the. time. Always have, even before digital (post-digital, i take 10x more since it is so easy and low cost and i always have my phone with me). Now I realize it was always because I knew I would not remember visually without the photo - I needed to capture the image, and this is how I can do that. My photo roll would be boring to anyone else. It is full of photos of my garden - flowers fleetingly blooming, beds I just rearranged (including an hour ago when headed out for a walk, because the morning light was hitting it beautifully). I also take photos when at an art fair or out erranding, either so I remember where I saw something I might want to go back later for, or because it gave me an idea. I will take a photo of a page in books I am reading, just because a turn of phrase was particularly intriguing. In museums I photograph art I like (why? no idea. i liked it.) Photos from trips with others I upload online to share with those on the trip; they add theirs, but I usually have far more. On a hike in the mountains I will take a photo of a group of boulders, because the shapes are interesting (I do spare others from most of the non-people shots when I share trip photos). I've become the defacto producer of photo slideshows for memorial events when family members have passed away, since I have so many family photos over decades. I do go back through my photo roll at times, more in the winter or when I am in there looking for something in particular (example: recently I needed a photo of a particular room's ceiling when it was open years ago during a construction project, to see where new electrical might be routed. I knew I had photographed daily during the remodeling. I found it immediately. Apple's ability to search photos using descriptive words helps. While in the app, I came across cute old photos of my now-adult children, that I then texted to them). Since recently discovering aphantasia, I realize that other people probably don't NEED photos because they store images in their mind.