Picture perfect

I was walking this morning with a friend of mine and the rode we walk on passes through open fields. In one of the fields was a flock of migrating cranes. They were beautiful birds and when they would take flight over the green alfafla their brown wings would turn gold in the early morning sunlight. When I saw these birds, my first thought was that I wished I had my camera. As though somehow, this moment would mean more if I could capture it, if I could keep it and show it off, if I could have a trophy to prove that I get up early and do good things (like walking)and don't you wish you were walking early too so you could see sights like this? I started thinking about this compulsive need I (and many like me)have to document every moment so they don't slip away, to hide behind a camera and watch the world though a lens instead of participating in it. It is hard to be in the present and take take things for what they are with out trying to "capture" them and "save" them. I wonder sometimes about the thousands of pictures we take of our kids. Every milestone of their life is documented. I overheard a conversation one at a Children's museum about how we are raising the most documented generation in history. Pictures of our great grandparents are precious because they are rare. Our great-great-grandparents might have had one picture taken of them their whole lives. Will our over-documenting of our children's lives seem cheap and meaningless to them or will they believe them selves to be super-stars stalked by their poperatzi paretns. Or maybe it doesn't have any meaning at all.