Tips, Trends and Techniques Tuesday: Embrace The Imperfect

Confession time: I love snapshots. I love that they showcase ‘real life’, they capture true personalities, they show growth and change. Snapshots show that life isn’t perfect 100% of the time.

What I don’t love about snapshots? Sometimes you get photos that make you think, “Um, what was I trying to take a picture of here”, or what I get frequently with 5 kids, “WHAT THE HECK were they doing?” And because I have 5 kids I sometimes get ‘wonderful’ pictures that they took.

So, if you are like me – most likely you’ll also have a couple pictures like these:

This is the classic snapshot and what I love most about them. My then almost 2 year old son decided that food coloring was the best option for body paint. Of course I grabbed the camera. That’s something I want to remember forever.

Then we have this:

I was trying to get a picture of all of my kids with the little countdown gift their grandma gives them each night up to Christmas. They don’t always cooperate and I get things like this. So I should just delete this picture off my computer because 2 of my children have been possessed by demons, right?

WRONG! This is a picture I actually absolutely love. It wasn’t the picture I wanted to get, my kids don’t even all look happy. But it shows my sons true personality and it always makes me laugh. I haven’t scrapped that picture yet – it is on my to-do list. I’ll pretend it’s because I’m waiting for the perfect kit…

But here’s where I put my words into action:

My son ended up getting a 24 hour flu bug that swept through our family the next week. He was sooo sick for these pictures and even though the pictures with him in them aren’t ‘perfect’, I found a way to make a nice layout (documenting the whole sickness) with some imperfect pictures using Everybody Fight Sometimes.

So my tip for you this wonderful Tuesday, is to really look at those so called ‘imperfect’ photos and see what’s really there. Granted you’ll still have photos that really can and sometimes should just be thrown out, but don’t throw out every seemingly ‘imperfect’ photo. Sometimes it’s those photos that really tell our life stories and as the saying goes, “Bad choices makes for the best stories.”