I thoroughly enjoyed Nancy Aronie’s op-ed piece in a recent edition of the Gazette. I too had an epiphany about “recording the moment” instead of “being in it.” It was in Russia in 1974. My travel group was visiting the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, one of the most famous art museums in the world. It would take many days to see everything in this museum, which was built in 1764 and open to the public since 1852; we had only part of one day.

Galena, our young guide, led us to the wing that housed the impressionist paintings. “I will meet you at the other end of this hall in twenty minutes,” she said, and then disappeared. Twenty minutes! Some art aficionados will spend twenty minutes looking at one painting! I remember racing down that very long room, stopping only to snap a photograph of a painting I particularly liked or was familiar with.

When I finished my mad dash down the room so I could see all the famous impressionist paintings this Russian museum owned, I realized that although they were all caught on negatives inside my camera, I had not really seen them. I was locked into the guide’s schedule and could not go back — I would probably never go back. We were in the middle of the Cold War with Russia, and who knew what would happen next. Richard Nixon was our president.

Using a camera came naturally to me — I had been at it all my life, starting with a Brownie box camera which my father gave me when I was a child. The film was all black and white until I was about 12 years old. When I grew up I got a twin lens reflex that took square pictures — and finally a Nikon SLR (single lens reflex).

I became serious about taking photographs when I began to sell a few to the Gazette, and then more serious as I began recording the lives of my three children as they came along. That got rather expensive, so I sold a couple magazine features. Then I opened a small studio on Dan’l Manter’s land and became a photographer of children until 1955, when Sarah was born and I became too busy. I started to travel after I began teaching school, and by then I would be carrying two Nikons, one for color and one for black and white. Added to them I had several long lenses, a tripod and other accessories. When my grandchildren started to appear, I switched to a small Canon point and shoot, and photography again became just a hobby.

The digital age arrived and I had no desire to start all over again learning how to use a camera. In 2007 I stopped photographing. I passed the torch to Sarah who has become a real pro at bird photography.

I was not one of these people who take lots of photos and pack them away in shoe boxes; I kept albums. I have 35 albums of family photos I have taken in 60 years. And I have over 40 albums of the travels I’ve taken around the world. So although I wasn’t in the moment all my life, in my old age I can relive every trip I took, every birthday party for my children, every Christmas celebration our family shared. Even if my memory fails me someday, my albums are there to remind me of what a remarkable life I have had.

I also have saved those moments for my children and grandchildren — and who knows who will enjoy them in the future.

Shirley Mayhew lives in West Tisbury.