Sweet Shoppe Designs – The Sweetest Digital Scrapbooking Site on the Web

Hi everyone! It’s Traci here with my 365 Days of Bliss post on finding your Bliss in all forms of media at your disposal. I admit it, I used to fall into the “if it wasn’t captured by my DSLR, it’s inferior” trap. I have a really gorgeous, really expensive Canon 7D. It’s my 4th baby, and if you mess with my baby, you’re gonna get it!

No seriously, don’t touch my camera.

It takes wonderfully gloriously gorgeous photos with little effort, even on auto (though I shoot in manual most of the time). Case in point:

or:

But let me tell you, sometimes it’s just not convenient to carry the behemoth around. That camera is HUGE and most of the time nowadays, I’m carting an infant around, trying to keep the other boys from running in the streets and getting hit by cars and juggling like 4 bags. Something had to give. So I found myself starting to carry around my handy dandy point and shoot that my hubby got me last year for Valentine’s day when my Rebel decided to quit working (before I bought the 7D).

I always thought of this camera as a quick fix.  My “I don’t have any other choice but to use it camera” because it was purchased to be what got us through until I could afford the camera I REALLY wanted. Let me tell you, having this little guy in my purse has really lightened my load (both physically and mentally).  I pop the puppy out snap a few pictures and then put it away and ENJOY myself.  Imagine that..enjoying your memories WHILE they’re happening rather than being so concerned with capturing the perfect shot that you look at the entire day through a lens.  Here are some things I’ve captured with my point and shoot that I wouldn’t even have on film if I hadn’t had it in my purse:

(Finn starting to sit up!)

(Karsten at the library wearing the coon-tailed cap he made at Cub Scout camp)

Granted, these photos aren’t as beautiful, but does that make the memory captured obsolete? I think not. Another bonus? You’re not afraid to hand off your point and shoot to others. I had hubby take it to cub scout camp and got this photo back of my boy shooting a BB gun for the first time. I wasn’t there and wouldn’t have it on film without him taking my “baby” camera.

And what about cell phone cameras? Mine’s 8 megapixels but still takes crappy photos. Does this mean these photos shouldn’t be preserved? They’re not gorgeous, so not worthy of a page? I think of my cell camera as my “real life” camera. Sometimes they’re all I have when I take photos in places I wouldn’t normally bring a camera to, like the doctor’s office:

or walking to the gym and capturing a rare sweet moment:

Even worse quality, but these pictures tell stories just as much (or maybe more so than) the ones from my 7D and I’ve come to the realization in the last year that these photos need to be scrapped. They tell the story of the every day and are just as valid as the gorgeous ones from my 7D.

Thankfully, with the advent of all of these new resources we have for photo editing, even crappy cell pictures can be fixed and made into something beautiful:

(the view from above while working and surfing the net one day).

So I encourage you, Sweet Readers, to break free from the chains of  the “perfect” photo and capture your memories with whatever means you have at your disposal. Be it through fancy DSLRs, easy point and shoots, crappy cell photos or low resolution webcam grabs, this is your life..scrap it!