Just like many people nowadays I have got stuck at home. It was a difficult time for me. But in the loneliness of my sleeping, office, and home video studio today, I came across a lot of lost moments that I had forgotten. They lived on my iPhone for years in the form of three-second videos that were recorded when I recorded a video Live photo. However, this isn't just an iPhone feature: some were cinemamovies that I took with Android phones that do exactly the same thing. This is not about the loyalty or the technical data of the operating system, but about discovering the emotional moments that live photos have taken without my knowledge. At a time when tech companies claimed that their products were life-changing, this was a case where I actually did.
Because of all the fear that swallows our world, I've spent more time recently escaping to my room. It is my office. It is my studio. It is my quiet place. I got to the point of this meme: I've been stuck in this room for months and cabin fever is taking over.
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But one day when I was frustrated, I closed my work computer, took out my iPhone, and started scrolling through photos to take a mental break. Then I noticed a collection called Live Photos, which contained over 1,300 pictures. One was a live photo of my cat Stella. I adopted her during my work on A Streetcar Named Desire at the Writers' Theater in Chicago and named it after a character from the play. In the photo, she took a nap on my roommate's heating pad. When I knocked on it and held it, Stella moved her head and let out a tiny meow.
I almost lost it there. Stella died last summer, but when I tapped the photo and held it, she came back to life. A rush of emotions came over me like a thunderstorm on a hot summer day. To say the least, I didn't expect a live photo to trigger such intense feelings.
I immediately started scrolling through each photo and looking for the tiny Live Photo Circle indicator. The marketing guru at Apple who named this function had no idea how the name "Live" Photo would look on my face.
I found another photo of Stella stretching her neck and looking at birds outside my window. I also found other photos that came from family, friends or people I met. There were live photos I took with GZA and Masta Killa from Wu-Tang and the Aflac duck at the CES. Live photos also revealed the first seconds it took my friends to get ready when they were about to pose for a picture.
(The only live photos I haven't dealt with were some I found from an ex-girlfriend - I'm not a glutton for punishment.)
Of course, I could only watch videos of my cat Stella or my video interview with the Wu-Tang clan. But these give a different feeling. Live photos captured small, open, natural moments that were both banal and intimate. And the best part was that when I took these photos my friends Stella and Wu-Tang didn't even notice that these moments were being recorded. Stella's three seconds of reviving live photos were a wonderful distraction from the uncertainty that surrounds us all.
As Eunice says at the end of the tram while comforting Stella: "You have to keep going, honey. No matter what happens, we all have to keep going."
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