With Thanksgiving coming up in just a couple of days, I thought I would go through my photos to see some of our past traditions. Because I have my photos organized chronologically, it was easy to go back to my November photos and find those memories. My system wasn’t perfect as I had no photos from 2003 or 2004 from Thanksgiving . . . but I had enough to remember how much fun my family has had cooking turkeys over the years.
When your family gets together this year, what pictures will you take of the moments? I am hoping you won’t take more than a couple dozen photos at the most. When you take fewer, it easier to save the best parts of your day. Are you someone who takes more than a hundred photos at a holiday? Maybe it’s time to snap a few of the best shots.
Instead of a photo of the set dining room table, grab a shot of your sister and your daughter. See the photo above? We can tell its Thanksgiving because of the stuffing!
With any holiday or group setting, instead of taking many photos, be strategic. Here’s the two main things I think you want to do with your photo taking from any event:
- Capture the moments and traditions you want to remember
- Identify who was important in that moment or event (a couple of times at the most, maybe with different people doing different things)
What are the traditions of cooking the turkey in your family? Are they unusual? My family was filled with nontraditional cooks. I have photos of Turdunkens, frying turkeys and smoking turkeys on a Green Egg! In the photos below, both my dad (with the Green Egg) and my father-in-law (with the turkey fryer) are gone. We are planning on frying a turkey this year and I hope next year we can get the Green Egg going to smoke a turkey. My children love looking at these photos and I hope they carry the tradition on for us when we can’t cook anymore!
If you have a photo mess, and want to learn more about saving your photos, check out our book “A Guide To Saving Your Family Photos” available on Amazon.