Submission (#2587) Approved

Panel had never taken a selfie before, but they wanted to meet up with a few friends to capture some photos for memories. However, they felt that the photos they took needed to be absolutely perfect to be worthy of keeping, and they had been stressing for the past hour and a half as a result. Every photo had something wrong with it— their hair was slightly out of frame in this one, this one was too blurry, the angle on this one was bad.. so on and so on. It got to a point where they felt so overwhelmed that they needed to take a walk around the nearby park, hoping that the visit would give them some newfound inspiration for their photography. They took photos of trees and birds, ones of the sun or of pretty flowers blooming from the slow warming of spring. But, alas, not a single shred of inspiration made it’s way into their head.

Defeated, they gathered themself and headed back to their home, waiting for their friends to arrive later that day. They would just have to go without making the Polaroid wall they so badly wanted go have in their room— maybe another time they’d be able to capture some more acceptable footage.

Their friends arrived about half an hour after they returned home, bringing games and movies to watch during their get together. They all had heard about Panel’s photography, and begged to take a group picture. Reluctantly, Panel took out their camera and held it up to take a group selfie. Right as they were about to capture the perfect photo, their hand slipped, leaving the picture a blurry mess. They felt horribly upset at seeing how the picture was ruined, but all of their friends just laughed and begged to see it, insisting that it came out perfectly. It was then that they realized that it didn’t matter if the photo was in focus or composed perfectly— what mattered was the memories that it held, and no matter how professional it looked, it still captured a moment in time forever.