Everyone remembers the horrible slide shows that they would sit through. Where you would see the same people with the same expression in front of different landmarks. When I was younger and traveled with my parents, that was the kind of photos we took with a film camera. Those photos would be developed and put into an album never to be seen again.

I remembered once when we visited Boston that my mom insisted on taking a picture with a statue at the Harvard campus. I was embarrassed. It was the same posture and expression she had at everything else we had taken picture of during the tour. It was dull, boring, and mundane.

When I got my own digital camera in college, I resolved never to do the same. Every picture has a purpose. With the advent of distributed pictures easily accessible on the Internet, was there any reason to take a picture of something that we can easily find…a better shot on the web?

While in Hong Kong, I hated taking pictures like these, but I could tell my aunt was not used to my liberal, creative ways of photo-taking (and would the Chin Lin Nunneries be ok with my sudden creativity?)

There is a reason why Toad is in my pictures. There is no point in taking a picture unless I can truly make it mine. If I take the same shot as someone else, it’s a waste of digital space. Especially with my canon powershot elph that’s struggling behind the times.

This is also why Toad was in “costume” at my friend’s wedding in Hong Kong: