If I come home from a lengthy vacation with more than 10 photos on my iPhone, I consider myself a failed photographer. When I do get home, I edit that number down even more. Those few that remain will reside on my home computer screen or linger in my phone’s photo file.

It wasn’t always that way: I used to be so excited to share my adventure slides with what I thought was “brilliant” narration, until I looked out at my minuscule audiences to see family or friends dozing, or noshing, or chatting.

During the showings, our hang-about family chihuahuas lay curled on their pillows, occasionally lifting their ears (probably out of pity).

So, my thousands of slides in their stacked carousels shown once, maybe twice (if I could recruit victims), for years sat on a closet shelf collecting the proverbial dust bunnies.

It didn’t really take much thought not long ago for me to detach any emotion from those carousels as I dumped them sans ceremony into the recycle dumpster. However, the highlights of a lifetime of unique travel still reside in my memory’s photo library. Plus, my wife and I have collected enough tchotchkes to “take us back” to wherever we had been before.

Recently, after a six-week cruise through the Baltic and North Sea regions, I wanted to share the two photos that I have kept (please don’t doze, nosh or chat). I call this slideshow “The Evolution of Nordic Flight.”

The first is that of a Boeing jet engine just as the sun set (loved the lighting; I think Boeing would too). The second I titled “Don’t Touch that Banana on the Balcony Railing.” Like my early audiences, that avian thief didn’t listen. That bird was faster than I was as a kid sneaking a cheek kiss on my neighbor on our first movie date.

In the type of photography that I like, timing is everything. Obviously, so is the art of snatching bananas — or stealing a kiss.