I have literally boxes of photos in my house, taken over the many years since I joined 4-H as a kid and chose photography as my project.

One of the first things I was taught in my college journalism photo class was to overshoot — take several pictures of whatever I’m aiming the camera at so there’s a good choice.

That habit naturally carried over to my personal life. The best of the photos I’ve taken over the years are in albums, tucked away in the cedar chest. The others are tossed into those boxes.

A few years ago, I moved into the world of digital photography, with images stored in neat little mini disks. I print the photos I want and the rest stay stored as electronic images.

While that system certainly cuts down on the need for storage space, it has curtailed one of my favorite activities: family blackmail.

There is no threat more hideous to a teenage girl than pulling out “the” picture, the school portrait where her front teeth are missing, her hair is sticking straight up and she has that deer-in-the-headlights look as she stares straight ahead.

We all have seen those photos, taken by whoever serves as the informal family historian, that we’d like to see burned immediately. I know I’ve been in my share of them, because I don’t photograph well.

I try my best to get in the back row whenever I have to pose for a picture, hoping that all of me to show will be a few inches of forehead.

I’ve been letting my hair grow; when people ask, I tell them I was ready for a change. The honest truth is that my sister has become a fanatic about using her cell phone camera, and we never know when that shutter is going to snap.

I figure if I spend most of my time around her with my head tipped slightly forward, my hair will fall and obscure the bags under my eyes, the stupid smile I plaster on when someone says “cheese” and ruin every shot she takes.

Recently, someone asked me to take a photo for them, and I took my camera card to the drugstore to print off that photo. While I was there, I printed off a few more, too, photos that will never make it to a family album but will remain forever in a box, to be hunted up and pulled out whenever the opportunity presents itself.

First among these was a great snapshot of my daughter sound asleep under Miz Goldie’s afghan.

Fire engine red, the afghan was a gift to me from Miz Goldie, a older church lady who has passed away. The afghan is magic because if you curl up beneath it, you’re asleep within five minutes — and as this photo proves, we’re not all beautiful when we sleep beneath it.

There’s a great shot of my daughter-in-law playing a toy brain game; the look on her face is absolutely priceless. And yes, it’s a keeper. I figure I can get at least a couple of offers to wash the dishes from that one.

Like I said, these photos will be pulled out as needed. Other family members are not so kind, I fear, and I live in dread of the day I log onto my computer to check my Facebook page and there will be that picture my sister took of me crossing my eyes and sticking my tongue out when I was 12 and mad at her.

My revenge? My own posting of her bent over a campfire in too-tight shorts, thank you very much.

CATHIE SHAFFER can be reached at (606) 473-9851.