I <3 Photos.

I love photographs.

Ever since my mom let me take her 35mm to school at the end of 7th grade, I've been infatuated with taking pictures. I went to a public school that year (the only year I ever attended public school) and there were so many people I didn't know that my mom didn't want me to pay for a yearbook. Instead she sent me to school with her camera so I could take my own pictures of all my friends--which I did.

Since then, I've had a variety of cheap or disposable film cameras used to take pictures of my life until college. Things really kicked off when I got a digital camera for graduation from high school. I could finally take unlimited photos! So I did.

My freshman year of college I took almost 500 pictures total. Sophomore year I took almost 800 plus the many I took in my photography class. My junior year I went crazy: over 3800 photos. This number also combines photos I took from other people's cameras--but most are my own. So far this senior year I'm almost at 1500. I haven't taken as many as last year for some reason. I blame the fact that my best friend got a new camera so we like to use hers instead of my almost four year old camera.

Did I find more to photograph as the years progressed? I'm not really sure why I take more and more pictures. I think junior year I developed a best friendship with a girl who loved photos as much as I did so we took obscene amounts. This year I don't seem to be as photo-obsessed. I wonder if I don't do things that are photo-worthy this year. But since I like photos of everything and anything, it shouldn't matter. Maybe it's the new people I hang out with this year. I don't want to scare them with my photo-obsession. Maybe it's time to reevaluate myself and start taking more pictures again. I have a little over three months left at Concordia and I want to remember everything--pictures help me with that because my memory isn't great. It's time to get back to documenting my life in photos. I don't care if people call me obsessed or crazy. I need the memories. I have a fear of forgetting or missing a photo opportunity.

I'm only 21 years old and I have almost as many personal photo albums as my family has combined. I imagine my house post-graduation to be covered in frames with pictures everywhere. I have all my pictures on my computer, backed up on discs, printed in albums. I have such an attachment to my photos. Of all the things I own, my photos would be the most devestating to lose (in a natural disaster, fire, robbery, etc.).

I guess that's all I've got to say about my photo-obsession. I'm not even sorry.

--Alicia--