My favorite picture I’ve taken on my digital camera is a selfie of me and two of my best friends. We’re looking up at the camera, with sparkly makeup and freshly-curled hair. We’re standing in one of their bedrooms wearing long dresses, one glittering and another covered in red lilies. Moments later, we would parade downstairs and drive to meet our friends for pictures and dinner, and eventually, go to Winter Formal.

Another picture, taken just a few hours earlier, is of my best friend walking through a cave, dwarfed by the high, sloping walls of the caverns in the Anza Borrego desert. You can see the sun just outside, and shafts of golden light catch dust motes floating onto her ponytail. We had spent the morning belly-crawling through dusty tunnels, with her friends who became mine while on a mud-caving trip, and were hiking through the twisting caves back to the tent-dotted campsite.

Still another is of my friends and me huddled, laughing, on the field after a home-game win for the boys varsity lacrosse team. Some are players, boasting jubilant grins and running eye-black, and the rest of us excited fans, clutching posters of our favorite players’ faces. You may not be able to hear our hoarse voices, but the energy is palpable. 

These moments may have passed, the fleeting details long forgotten, but I’ll always have these perfect, shining scenes preserved by the bright flash and clicking shutter of my Canon PowerShot S45. 

My little, silver camera, 20 years ago brought to life by my dad’s pictures of family trips to Canada and later with my siblings smiling faces, has now fallen into my hands. Since January, it’s been my constant companion to everything, from rallies and banquets, to parties and hangouts, to games and trips. 

Yes, I have a camera on my iPhone, but I have come to realize that I prefer my digital camera to my iPhone camera.  Granted, it doesn’t have the crystal-clear quality and endless storage that my phone offers, its CF card can get lost or damaged, the significantly longer shutter-speed does not let me take dozens of pictures at once, and I can’t do anything with the pictures until I get home and upload them to my computer. However, I find that these seeming inconveniences offer a charming, “in-the-moment” authenticity. In a way, it makes the pictures feel more permanent. It takes longer to take a photo, but the reveal is more gratifying. My camera forces me to be more intentional with who, and what, I take pictures of. Moreover, the flash of my digital camera fills the pictures with a warm quality, and the pictures feel more nostalgic and brighter than phone pictures do.

I’ve also found that the reaction to a digital camera is far different and vastly superior. Last rally, I circled the gym and yelled at the class sections to “get together!” and “smile!” To my surprise, they all listened and prepared for the tell-tale flash. I guarantee that I wouldn’t have received the same compliance had I pulled out my phone. This speaks to the authority given to a digital camera; they look more official, and make people take the person holding the camera  more seriously. The novelty of a digital camera seems to make people more eager to be in a picture. Kids enthusiastically ask me to take photos of them with their friends. 

What’s more, my camera has enabled me to successfully document my life, something that younger me tried and failed at, through my numerous journals and diaries, forgotten about and collecting dust on the bottom-most shelf on my bookshelf. This camera has finally fulfilled my goal of memorializing my favorite moments-turned-memories. I have so many fond memories of hanging with my favorite people who I’ve laughed with until our ribs hurt and of going to our favorite places that will always remind me of them. Where I used to have them shakily preserved in my memory, they are now enshrined in a photo album, on my camera roll, and in the camera rolls of everyone else. My digital camera will always make me think of the middle of my junior year, in a way that my phone won’t.

These pictures, most importantly, are for everyone I’ve had the joy of meeting and becoming friends with. They’re the reason why I started a photo dump account (it’s @lalibellue.dgtl if you want to check it out). Scrolling through, you watch literal snapshots of my life, and how I share it with the people I love: pictures of juniors packed onto bleachers, ASB students clustered on a bus, Unity Day facilitators lined up, cheerleaders clumped together, and friends sprawled across couches, climbing over mountains, baking in kitchens. Guys on the dance floor, girls in the Jeep. Glittering snowfall, crashing waves, dazzling sunsets. These pictures are for bringing people together, in whatever small way they can.