A gift for people who love photography.

When I was sixteen, I had a crush on a boy in my class. At that time, it coincided with the eve of the senior high school entrance examination and the separation was imminent. I want to give him a present as a souvenir.

But I was worried about what gift to give, because I didn't have money at that time and couldn't afford expensive things. After careful consideration, I decided to send him a photo of me.

The next evening, I entered the photo studio door. The owner of the photo studio is a middle-aged man. He has poor aesthetics and painted me a bright red lip makeup. So, I wore exaggerated red lips, red short-sleeved cheongsam in the style of the Republic of China, supported an oil-paper umbrella and took four photos against a simple background cloth. At that time, the price was extremely low, and the total cost of makeup, clothing, props and four photos was only in 20 yuan.

The photo studio in the small village has no retouching tools, and the photo is what you really look like. Although the makeup artist's makeup skills are a little poor, when I went to pick up the photos a few days later, I was still very satisfied with the slim girl in the photos.

The night I got the photo, under the dim light, I carefully wrote a line of extremely official but sincere blessing words on the back of the photo with a pen. "To XXX, I wish you a bright future and fruitful results."

He is a boy with excellent grades in the class, and many girls like him quietly. The next morning, I borrowed a reference book from him on the pretence, then put the photos in the book, and returned the book in the afternoon with a violent heartbeat.

I'm curious about what happened to him after receiving the photo. He tossed and turned at night and fell into insomnia. However, the mind of youth is mostly an active and lonely monologue. The next day, when he saw me, he didn't have much reaction. He just smiled and said "thank you".

02

In the white-clad youth, the saddest and happiest thing is graduation. Graduation is a carnival mixed with sadness, the beginning of parting ways, and a commemoration of young people mixed with tears and laughter.

When graduating from middle school, it is popular for schools to fill out graduation message books and paste photos or headshots next to messages in the books. At that time, I wrote many blessings and posted many photos with tears in my eyes. I have two thick guest books myself, and I can dig out countless touches and sighs when I am free.

On the guest book, the personal data of nearly 100 students, such as blood type, preference, idol, telephone number, address and so on, are written; There are also different styles of messages. The handwriting is written by naughty boys and demure girls, but the blessings are the same, recording the malt-like fragrance of friendship days.

Those photos are also grotesque, including art photos taken in the studio, funny life photos and beautiful small background stickers. Fresh faces are naive and naive, as if the years of classmates are just around the corner, but youth is irreversible.

When I was a child, I always thought that good friends were each other's lives. But now that I think about it, that friendship was wishful naive. Many childhood friends have long lost contact and occasionally meet on WeChat. There are not many words except simple greetings. What is more sad is that things have changed, and several old friends of middle school students can't get together again in this life because of accidents such as car accidents and diseases. It's a pity to think about it.

When I graduated from college, writing guest books was out of fashion, so we took a lot of photos as a souvenir. At that time, I thought, with the mobile phone, qq and WeChat, the distance between the north and the south is just a plane ticket, so don't be too sad.

But we all forget that geographical distance is not a problem, and the distance in life is the biggest culprit in murdering friendship. Some people are very scattered, even if they maintain a friendship of praise. Because everyone's life trajectories are different from each other, the common language is becoming more and more scarce. Occasionally, I can only recall the past, but I can't see the future together.

Fortunately, there are photos, yours, mine, hers, the beauty and throbbing of youth are well preserved in that yellowed photo album, recording the clouds that bloom and fall in the beautiful years. You occasionally flip through it when you are sad, only to find it in the noisy world, and you still have such an innocent and pure secret garden.

03

On my mother's birthday the year before last, my sister gave her an extremely precious gift-a 12 inch photo album. The photo album is very thick and full of photos. Some of these photos were taken by mobile phones, some by cameras, some were images of family gatherings, and some were souvenirs of going out to play.

Mother likes this photo album very much. No matter day or night, she often holds it in her hand and looks at it repeatedly as a treasure.

Growth is cruel, and this cruelty is the sorrow of parents. Children are like swallows, destined to leave the nest from an early age. Everyone has their own difficulties, such as children and parents.

My parents are now the most common and common couple among many left-behind elderly people in rural areas. My sister and I can only go home once a month. Most days, they live alone and have a simple life.

It's sad to think about it. Now there are only two people in a family that used to be full of laughter and laughter, and loneliness is self-evident. When my mother is bored, she likes to wear reading glasses to look at old photos, and cheerfully points out to her father that "this is a photo taken when I was traveling that year" and "this is what my daughter looked like when she was five years old".

In fact, it is still lonely, but since the photo album, when parents are lonely, they can lean together to recall the joys and excitement of the past and chat for comfort. For parents, money is really not the most important thing, only more company is the greatest filial piety in the world.

We are always used to taking beautiful selfies, or recording children's growth images every day, but we rarely take a few photos for our parents and make an album.

If you have the heart, please prepare a precious gift for your parents. Even if it is a simple photo album, if it is full of deep affection, they will regard it as a treasure and cherish it for a lifetime. Because what you sent is not a photo, but your full love for your parents.

04

Now I don't like taking pictures with my mobile phone more and more. On the one hand, the pixel of my mobile phone is really not high, and when uploading photos to the computer, the effect is always unsatisfactory. Another, I can't help beautifying myself with various retouching tools. Beauty is beauty, but after all, it has lost its true colors. Sometimes at first sight, I hardly know myself.

Although I don't have any photography skills and the photos taken with my camera are not amazing, I like the truth. I am used to sorting out photos every month and then developing them into tangible photos. I am used to putting photos into an album carefully according to time, scene, background color, etc. Then take them out and read them page by page in your spare time.

Not long ago, I met a boy I once liked in the WeChat group, and I couldn't help but mention the gift of the photo of that year. He took photos of me in those days and sent them to me. I suddenly crossed the time tunnel and returned to the summer of sixteen, as if I smelled the fragrance of gardenia on campus.

The photo of that year was really silly, with affected appearance, ugly posture and naive expression, but this photo is really precious, because it represents a wonderful or embarrassing moment when I was young. Time can't take it away, years can't brush it away, and the moment is fixed into eternity.

Nowadays, most people have no habit of printing photos except wedding photos. But I still stubbornly believe that the pictures in the mobile phone are just pictures, and only the pictures really sandwiched in the album are photos. So over the past few years, I have piled up a lot of photo albums, which can comfort loneliness and enjoy joys and sorrows. It's really good.

Recently, a friend is going to Japan on business for three years. She came to say goodbye and propose a toast to me, but she still felt powerless after the break. She felt that feasting, drinking, singing and hugging were not enough to express my friendship.

It suddenly occurred to me that I should still send her a photo of me, which is the best gift I can give. I hope Qianshan is in a foreign country Every time she sees a photo, all she can think of is the warmth of her hometown and the warmth of missing.