Magic Moments

You know how there are some moments in your life where things are so perfect, so beautiful, so lovely and true, that you’d like to stuff the entire day in your pocket and carry it around with you forever?

Recently, I *was* able to capture a very magical moment on film. Three weeks ago, we were on vacation in Dillon Beach, California.  It is remote, and windy, and rugged. There is no cell phone or internet service. It is, like most of California’s coastline, incredibly beautiful.

We had spent a day driving around adventuring and the children were anxious to get to the beach, despite the looming darkness. On a normal day, we would’ve told them no. It was cold. We wanted to go back to our beach rental, take hot showers and relax.

But we didn’t. This vacation was about reconnecting as a family, and indulging the simple wishes of a child to whom we too often say “no, we’re tired” or “no, we’re busy right now.”

We went to the beach.

Boy Wonder wanted to do his Tae Kwon Do forms in the sand. And then, he did this:

and it was magic.

The next day, Little CEO donned a wetsuit, dragged herself into the freezing ocean, and boogie boarded for the first time. It called for tenacity, and Little CEO is nothing if not tenacious. She loved it despite being knocked about and scared. I captured this shot of her toting her boogie board in from the surf.

I love the movement of her body, the look on her face, the positioning of the surfboard. I couldn’t have staged that shot if I tried.

It was magic.

I’ll bet you have tons of magic moments, too.

Some are stored on Facebook albums. Others, Shutterfly. Still more, perhaps Instagram or your iPhone.

Pieces of your life story, strewn about all over the internet, like fragments of seashells on the Dillon Beach shore.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could gather up all of those fragments and see them, not just as an individual magic moment, but as a part of that beautiful mosaic that is your life story?

Now you can. You need to go check out ThisLife.

ThisLife is an online service that gathers, improves and organizes your digital photos in one place (the cloud), where they are safely stored and arranged in a chronological timeline. ThisLife pulls your photos and notes from Instagram, Shutterfly, Facebook, your iPhone and more. It uses a “magic box” technology to organize them, conduct facial recognition and auto-tagging, and you are presented with a step by step photo or video story.

When I first used ThisLife, I was doubtful that I would see any benefit to it. But I imported all of my photos from the places ThisLife supports, and I was amazed. Thousands and thousands of photos, all pieced back together. I immediately thought, “I wonder what my very first photo was that I stored online?”

I scrolled back to the start of my timeline and this is what I saw:

Boy Wonder’s first photos – the first photos I ever uploaded online 8 years ago. And every single photo between then and now was there – in perfect chronological order.

If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

You’ve got to try this service out. It.is.amazing. ThisLife is offering my readers 6 months of free Adventure Box service, which allows you to store up to 20,000 photos.

You won’t regret this walk down memory lane – I promise. Now go get your life story pieced back together – and share in a comment what your last magic moment was!

Tagged as: photography, sponsored, thislife