Seems like a Good Idea at the Time

I'm a big picture taker; ever since I purchased my current digital camera, I am constantly snapping.  I've had a camera since my grandpa gave me my first 35 mm when I was 8 years old, but with when we went digital, I snap constantly.  This camera is so little, it fits in my pocket and our desktop has a slot to directly insert the memory card and import photos so I have realized I have no excuse not to document my family's life in photos.  As we've been trying to decide the best way to back up our hard drive (with two little boys who love to play with water, anything can happen, you know!), I've been looking through our old photos and several caught my eye from a trip to Washington, D.C. a year ago and it got me asking an age old question:

Why do we take weird photos with monuments?

Seriously!  We all do it; when we were lining up these shots with Ethan eating the Washington Monument, other people were doing the same!  It's not just the Washington Monument either.  I doubt there have been very few people who have been fortunate enough to make it to the Leaning Tower of Pisa and yet chosen to walk away with out a photo of them holding it up or pretending to knock it over.  In Colonial Williamsburg, the longest line there was the wait to get to take your photo while in the stocks.  In all of my musings, I have not been able to come up with a good philosophical answer as to why it seems wrong to not get some of these pictures but these aren't the ones we tend to frame and put up for display in our living rooms.

I think it is the same phenomenon that made me impulsively purchase the Tigger ears to wear at Disneyland.  It seems like a good idea at the time.

I'm planning on taking the kids for some professional photos soon and my new goal is to integrate this sense of authentic fun into the shots we take so that one day, the boys can look back and really see themselves in their photos.  And really, anyone who knows us is already aware that my boys seldom sit down all posed like that anyway!