The Happiness of a Photograph

I have a good friend who wrote his dissertation on happiness levels of college students (or something of that nature). While I may not be able to recall the exact topic or dissertation title, what I can recall is that there was a study cited which reported that looking at one’s own Facebook photos can increase happiness. Think about it…what do you usually post photos of? Typically when you scroll though someones feed (be it Facebook, Instagram, or just old family photo albums), you see a myriad of happy images! We like to put our best foot forward so to speak…posting the photos that depict our memories and experiences in the happiest ways possible. (We don’t usually post the “bad” vacation pictures!)

This got me thinking…I store all of my personal photos on a third party site for safe keeping (fearful of the day my laptop will crash!)….I have done this for over 7 years! So I went back and began browsing some random albums and what do you know….it made me happy! In an effort not to get swept up in the memories, I chose to attend to the photos without people in them. I wonder why I took them, what made me think that I needed to capture each moment in time? I wonder if there is a theme?

Here’s what I found:

It seems the things that stand out most to me as visually pleasing are the landscape scenes with vibrant colors!