That First Photo

I must confess: for each photo you see posted in my web albums, there’s around 10 more photos you’ve been spared from seeing. EVER. The blurred ones, those with colors beyond repair, the countless accidental shots of my thumb, the plain ‘why-the-heck-did-I-take-this-one?!’ photos — yes, all of those were zapped into the virtual limbo of my laptop’s hard disk, erased ala-‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’.

The first photo I ever take on my trips rarely make it to the cut. Usually, it’s a test shot of my bag, or of people hanging around the airport’s boarding gates. Or, more often than not, of giddy travel companions who simply can’t wait to land before taking the first shot.

That’s why the first photo I snapped when I landed in Beijing was actually a pleasant shock. It turned out to be passable by itself — quirky, cute, and it screamed, “I’m from China!”. Deep inside, my heart did its giddy high-five-me dance.

That photo inspired me to dig into my trove of photo albums and see how my other First Photos fared. Some of them were expectedly bland, most of them were actually not that bad. A lot of them made me laugh out loud as they triggered memories, especially the ones with the wide smiles from my friends, even though we were only steps away from the tarmac (or from the check-in counter!) and have seen nothing yet of the destination. Good times!

I’m posting some of my favorite First Photos below. Try to burrow into your own photo reserves and see what you can unearth; I bet you’ll have fun, too. If you’d care to share, I’d love to see what gems you find! Again, the first photo might not be the prettiest one in the bunch, but still, it has its own story. It’s good to be reminded of the first thing that compelled you to snap away and immortalize a trip into a memory.