The moments worth capturing every year
We photograph birthdays and holidays and forget everything else. Yet it is the ordinary moments that are most missed twenty years later. Here is what is worth capturing each year.
The big moments everyone already documents
Births, weddings, graduations, moves: already photographed to excess. The only useful work here is choosing five images and writing one line of context while you still remember the details.
Five annotated photos beat three hundred unsorted ones. Every time.
The moments people regret not capturing
They are almost always the same, in every family.
- The house as it actually was: empty rooms, the messy kitchen, the yard, the street.
- Everyday gestures: someone cooking, fixing something, brushing a child’s hair.
- Voices: an ordinary conversation at the table, unstaged.
- Older relatives doing something, not just posing for the camera.
- The family pets, who shape a childhood more than anyone expects.
One annual ritual, always the same
The best method is the dumbest one: on the same day each year, photograph every family member in the same spot, and write five lines about the year.
After ten years that series is worth more than all the other photos combined: it makes time visible, which no single image can do.
Capturing is not enough — file it the same day
A photo taken and left on a phone is not preserved, it is simply waiting to disappear. Filing has to happen right away, while the context is fresh.
One minute of captioning at save time saves an hour of reconstruction in ten years — and avoids the unanswerable question: "who is that in the picture?"
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a good camera?
No. A recent phone is more than enough. What family archives lack is never image quality — it is the subject and the caption.
What if the teenagers refuse to be photographed?
Photograph the scene rather than the face: hands, the table, the bedroom, someone’s back as they leave. Those images often turn out to be the most moving ones.
How many photos should I keep per year?
Between one and two hundred selected images is enough to tell a family year. Beyond that, nobody looks at them.
Solexi does not replace a legal will, a notary or a lawyer. Solexi helps you gather, organize and pass on your information.