Pictures of Me

The one thing I never forget when I’m leaving campus is my camera like the stereotypical western tourist I am. I’m obsessed with keeping a visual diary of my entire time here, continuously snapping away at every trivial thing I see. Before I left the states, mom bought me a new 4gb memory card, and I do intend on filling that up in the next two months, even with the cripple of forgetting my charger. If you look on my facebook, you can see that I’ve created a good number of albums already, proof that I’m well on my way to that goal.
With chinese mtv’s novelty wearing off, I’ve taken to looking back through my old facebook pictures. Within the past year, the my photo count has more than tripled. Staring from pictures three years ago, when facebook was first taking off, I can trace the steady progression from hiding behind the camera to nothing less than camera-whoring =] not that there’s anything wrong with that; it’s an obvious sign of improving self-confidence =]
When I was nine, I was convincing for a summer that I wanted to be a professional photographer. Aimed with nothing but a cheap wind-up camera of my mother’s and the cheap generic brand film that would come with every roll my mom sent to the developer’s, I shot a complete roll only to have two-and-a half shots come back to me. Trust an nine-year-old to know that you weren’t supposed to expose film to light. However, I remember being cheered up by one of those shots; a carefully contrived profile of flowers my mother picked up from the farmer’s market. Wow, I remember thinking, to be able to capture beauty like that.
Though I’ve long embrace the fact that I will never be doing convershoots for vogue, I am still obsessed with collecting the best shots to capture a fading moment, to gift an immortal life to a moment before time claims it. It’s this drive that pushed me last weekend to climb farther on the Great Wall that I was actually capable of handling, even though it wasn’t that far. As for whether or not it was worth it…. Well, the pictures are up on facebook =]
i find myself looking at my photos and wondering—did I ever imagine at the time of my first facebook pictures that my collection would expand to include photos of me in boston, new york, and all over china [question mark]. If a picture is worth a least a thousand words, what would have happened if I could have a glimpse at any current photos a two years ago. Would I have believed two years ago that I would be out club hopping in Beijing, dressed up to go to a Harvard formal with my boyfriend, or even just a picture of my friends and I out at ihop [question mark] What would she be able to derive from the person she would become in the future, and would she be happy with where her camera took her [question mark]
I can’t help but wonder what I could learn if I had access to just one picture from five or ten years in the future. Where would I be, who would be tagged next to me, who would have access to it [question mark] If I could know what direction I was heading in, would I want to change it or would I be content [question mark] It might offer some comfort to know for certain that everything will work out, but at the same point, I wonder if it would kill the trill out trying to figure it out. What ever does happen though, I am certain that I will be ready with camera at hand, ready to record life as it happens.