These pictures are old. I mean old old. Like, last spring old.

I was going through images that I needed to edit and get moved over to my external hard drive when I found these. They’re adorable, and I distinctly remember that Zach had just woken from a nap about 20 minutes before I took them. Echo jumped up on the bed in order to get some lovin’s from me, and Zach picked up his books. He looked at Echo, patted his butt as if to say “sit,” and started to read his books to Echo.

It was arguably one of the cutest moments I’ve witnessed in my entire life. I couldn’t resist snapping several photos since my camera was right there.

But, since children move and dogs move and I was just snapping away on auto mode, my pictures just weren’t that great. They weren’t lit perfectly, they were a bit blurry, and they just weren’t…. perfect.

I have this habit when I photograph things. I’ll snap about 400 photos of something, and then I’ll open them up and really look at them. I may adjust the lighting, I may tweak them, and I’ll go through and delete every photo that just doesn’t… work. If there’s a blurry patch, it’s gone. If there’s poor lighting, it’s gone.

As I’ve worked on this blog, I’ve tried to improve my photography enough that you can see what I’m doing with the food I’m making or the activity we’re working on in school, or whatever I happen to be blogging about.

The problem is that sometimes this professional side of me bleeds over into my personal life so much that sometimes I’ll ignore a set of photos that are cute, but not perfect. I overlook the fact that with a few minor tweaks and the memory intact, it doesn’t matter if these photos are perfect. It just matters that I’ve captured some sort of memory there.

These photos serve that purpose.

They’re blurry. They’re not perfect. There is no way that I can go back to that day, recreate that scene, shoot the photos again.

I have to live with the photos I got, and honestly, at second glance, they turned out really adorably. I notice that the blur really shows the pace Echo and Zach are moving at. It shows the scene, even if the pictures didn’t turn out perfectly, professionally, well-lit, evenly cropped, nicely framed.

They capture the spirit of my boys, and that’s enough for me.

So here’s what I want to challenge you to do.

Grab a camera. Take a silly photo. Take 10 silly photos. Take pictures of your son, your daughter, your grandchildren, your pet, your husband or wife, your brothers or sisters, your parents, yourself… whoever you want. But capture that memory. Take a bunch of photos. Throw perfection out the window– focus on the memory. If it’s blurry, it’s blurry. If it’s poorly lit, it’s poorly lit. If you get a perfect shot, even better. But focus on getting that memory, if nothing else.

I’d love it if you’d come back and share with me the shot you took, and any story behind the photo. I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with.