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We have officially graduated. There will be pictures to come, but not as many as I'd like. Something about our back-and-forth travels have made us horrible about taking pictures.

I've realized that much of the past two years has gone undocumented. There are scribbles of it in my journals, shareable moments on my blogs and scattered pictures (mostly thanks to my mom). I look at the two years of our relationship that came before our long distance and wonder if it was just the New Relationship Bloom that hadn't yet rubbed off. There are, without exaggeration, at least 100 pictures of us, taken by me while I held the camera at arms' length.

I've been wondering lately if this is really a problem. As I've gotten more interested in photography, I've started looking hard at the real value of a picture: what it meant in the beginning, when the process was so expensive, and then moving on to now when we take pictures of everything all the time without consequence. We take ten of one thing, then immediately select the best.

I've tried to be more frugal with my picture taking, and in a way I'm excited that we'll be relying on our memories and storytelling ability to share our history. I've tried to take less pictures that will one day make me look at them, move them under the glare of a light and think, "Why was this saved? Why must this be seen more than once?" (I have a high school photo album full of this.)

So as we move through the future, as we look at things we want so badly for others to see, I'm excited to find how I really feel about pictures and find a way to share the moments we missed pictures of. I'm excited to find the artistic moments that are more than a snapshot of the Eiffel Tower, more than a beautiful lavender garden, more than us sipping a coffee or sitting on a sofa.

These feelings grew stronger at Joe's graduation, when I sat between two people that must have spent the last month memorizing the information in their camera's user manual. I felt false, fraudulent and embarrassed with my Nikon around my neck while they chatted about ISOs and proper lighting, how much they spent to buy a lens just so that they could zoom into the stage. I felt like I was a part of it, the desire to buy large lenses to feel like a photographer, to show people across the room that I could seem like I knew what I was doing.

It took 20 minutes of them conversing about lens specs and expenses to admit that they knew nothing about photography. A man at their church had told them what to buy, what setting to use. I sat quietly, embarrassed. I promised myself that this summer, I would read the manual. I would find the good photography sites. I would learn myself good and keep it to myself. Then, maybe, Joe and I will have some pictures of each other, a nice family album and learn how to make prints that can hang on our wall and mean something–even if only to us two.