Click the shutter; take a picture, create memoirs -By Swandy Banta

The above are words of Robert Capa, Marc Riboud, Andy Warhol and Ansel Adams.

Now, do you wish you were a better photographer? All it takes is a little know-how and experience. Keep reading for some important picture-taking tips. Then grab your camera and start shooting your way to great pictures.

Look your subject in the eye

Use a plain background

Use flash outdoors

Move in close

Move it from the middle

Lock the focus

Know your flash’s range

Watch the light

So other persons would say…If you want to start using your camera, begin by taking a few pictures. Choose a subject, like a landscape or a pet, focus your camera for a moment, and then press the shutter button. The camera should capture this image.

Life is like a camera…how much of the shutter button are we pressing. No shutter, no picture, no picture, no memory, memories are a creation of light. There is light in every circumstances but do we see it, or we only see grief and darkness?

As I sat through the memorial service of the teenage girl who had passed away few days before that day, I spotted her grief stricken mom whom I barely recognized after only few days of mourning her daughter. I didn’t need to be told how hard this sudden departure had ripped her soul.

…then I remembered the words of Kezie Lartey, “hold loosely to that thing you so cherish the most because any moment it could be gone” she had been to our church a few months ago and told how her beautiful life with her successful medical doctor had suddenly ended when one day he was diagnosed with a rare kind of cancer and died before she could even fully come to terms with what was going on.

Here was a replay of Kezie’s experience with this lovely family who had to say goodbye to their daughter without notice.

Hmmmmmm…

As I sat through that memorial it dawned on me that my dad’s death had forced me to come to terms with the reality of Kezie’s advice. I actually could not pin point anything in my life that I held too closely to any more. Not my degrees, daughter, mother, siblings or even my job. But one thing I know I hold so tightly to is my relationship with God. After all it determines my eternity (I believe in God).

There’s this innate sense of entitlement to life that we most often thrive on as we journey through life. Sometimes we even have a self assumed calculation of what the length and quality of life here on earth should be for us. This dictates our approach to living such as extreme hustles, pride and a larger than life manner of living.

I hate to disappoint you but I must say emphatically that you or I have no say in how long or well we live. We don’t even get to determine how we die, except of course our “sniper’ friends who get to determine how they end it. Even at that we know cases of people who were rejected by sniper.

So why do we hold so tightly to things that at the end we have no control of?

My worry for us is that instead of us to spend our time building memories we get so engrossed with our efforts to play God in our lives and the lives of our loved ones.

For some parents, their kids have so many toys and attend the best schools but hardly have a relationship with them. For some husbands, their wives hardly know them but enjoy the best of material things.

Material things come and go without leaving much of memories.

My focus here today is to talk to us about building memories that outlast us and our loved ones. Even if they slip out of our hands we would have so much of them left with us to relish for whatever if left of our own lives.

To build memories that will outlast us and our loved ones I have the following suggestions:

i. You need to be deliberate about it. Decide in your heart that having understood how brief and fleeting life is you want to build memories that you or your loved ones (whoever is left behind) can find great joy and comfort in once you are gone. Trust me, sooner or later it will happen.

ii. Creating memories is both a group and one on one thing. For instance a family can create memories together but must always find one on one time. Bond and have fun with your kids one on one. In the office, create memories as a group but find ways of creating one on one time with the people you care about.

iii. Sacrifice is key. You must be willing to share your time, intellect and resources with the people you care about in creating memories. A few days ago I took my sister out just to have alone time with her. We just talked and enjoyed the weather and said our goodbyes. Believe me one day either she or I would remember that occasion. The other day I slept over at my elder sister’s house and we began gisting at about 9pm in the night and boom it was 4:30am in the morning. We laughed and headed to the kitchen to begin preparations for breakfast for the family (I ended up sleeping the morning away while she had to battle sleep the whole day). My mom took us to the park the day we were returning, paid the fares and waited till our vehicle was out of sight before she left. By God, these are events I would never forget. Lest I forget, when I visited my brother, his kids forced me into a choreography session with them. I have the videos of my frustrating moves as they struggled to keep me on tack. These are memories that will outlive me.

iiii. You can’t give what you don’t have. Sometimes we really want to create memories with our loved ones but our lives are too choked with the pressures and issues of this life. My advice is for you to unclutter your soul. Trust me problems and pressures will remain for as long as we’re on earth. Sometimes we need to quarantine our issues and find time to do the needful and then return to battling our demons. It’s tough but doable.

v. Always seek out ways to give and build the people you care about and not always be on the look out to receive from them. When I struggle to add value to your life and you do same, the bond we share is super tight and prepares the right platform for us to build a life that will outlive us.

vi. Finally allow the people you love to be themselves. It is only when people are allowed to express themselves freely without any fear of judgment that the purest form of their personality is enjoyed. My dad loved to play pranks. Quite some of my memories of him are those that had to do with some of the pranks he played on me. If I was all uptight and didn’t show I was ok with him being himself I would have missed out on all that.

I encourage you reading this to take time out to the studio and get a picture of you taken and even take some with your family or friends. Believe me those pictures will be a memory of you all someday.  Go for a picnic. Take your son on a hike. Find a new recipe to practice with your daughter. If it turns out bad have a good laugh. Change your hairstyle. Surprise a friend with lunch at work. Write a letter to someone who is not expecting it.

Karl Lagerfeld says, “What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”

Create memories. And that you can only do so by clicking the shutter and allowing light inside the camera of life, that way we did have created pictures that will outlive us.

Swandy Banta is blue blooded, ask her what that means and she gladly tells you, she’s been through the tunnel of pain and she found illuminating light. She writes and coaches on the difficult subject of pain. Whether it’s national pain, community pain or the pain of loss and the hurts of life that makes us all ask why—she brings new perspectives.

Swandy can be reached on swandy.banta@gmail.com