I forgot to take videos for the first few days after my son Charlie was born. I made sure to pack a couple nice cameras in my hospital bag, and recall struggling against the harsh lighting in my recovery room (not to mention the constant stinging of my incision) to snap some semi-decent photos of my new little bundle. It felt like enough at the time, though now I wish I had done a little more.
Maybe I should have shelled out for the professional photographer. I definitely should have insisted my husband take more pictures of me holding Charlie. And I should have taken some videos, too. Over the past two years countless friends have had babies, and many of them took videos of some of their earliest moments. I find myself wishing I had done the same.
In a way though, I did. I was using an iPhone 6s when Charlie was born. I took a few photos of him at the hospital to easily send to family and friends, and of course took many [thousands] once we finally got home. I’ve always had Live Photos enabled, so each one of those snapshots recorded a tiny 3-second clip.
The clips are shaky, low-quality, and mostly lack sound (because the little guy was sleeping), but there’s just something about them. I’m glad they’re there. They add some “concreteness” to a time of my life that seems like a blur, in a way that a photo alone couldn’t quite accomplish.
When I’m considering how to record a moment, I almost always favor photographs over videos. After all, you can’t really hang a video on your wall. Live Photos make that choice even easier, and with an app like Snapthread, I can still salvage a great moment from a sub-par photo.
My hope for the future of Live Photos is that we won’t have to choose between taking the highest quality photo and capturing those precious little videos. Having portrait mode and adjustable depth data is amazing, but hearing my little boy’s laugh years later is perhaps even more so.
If all goes according to plan, I’ll be going in for a scheduled cesarean section two weeks from tomorrow and we’ll finally get to meet our little girl. You can bet I’ll be taking even more Live Photos (and longer videos too) this time around.
If you use Snapthread to share some of your favorite moments publicly, I’d love it if you’d use the hashtag #snapthread or tag @snapthread (either on Twitter or Instagram) in your post so I can find them. And if you’ve written an article or blog post about how Live Photos in general have affected your life, I’d love to read that too!