Where is the emotional connection to a photo larger :
1) when there's maybe couple photos available
2) when you have 4GB of the same session, with multiple burst shots.
I'd even argue that having 1 photo of a certain event brings you back memories of most what happened at that certain time IF you spent it there fully - meaning not jerking around most of the time with a camera/mobile phone taking photos.
I like to take a couple of photos for my album when I am doing some activity I'd like to remember (say, visiting a place on vacation). It's pretty important to me.
However, I dislike two things
1.) Doing it for every small activity
2.) Broadcasting it on social media
For 1.), I find that I don't really benefit from every walk around town or whatever in my albums. It's more enjoyable to remember significant moments - and there are quite enough I think.
For 2.) I find that to find a good representation of what is happening, I need to alter my behavior. Instead of taking two to five pictures, I need to take videos and hundreds of pictures etc. As others have mentioned, this kills the actual thing. Instead of "I visited place X and did Y", it becomes "I took photos and videos at place X pretending to do Y".
So the sweet spot is in between. I am very happy to have taken some photos - even selfies - in the past, and I wish I would have taken slightly more photos (or better ones, or videos) in the past, before we had such nice phone cameras.
Pictures are great to remember moments. For that, we need enough pictures of these moments - but we also need to have made memories. We need to have experienced the actual thing.
Pictures that go on social media are marketing. They have a different purpose.
That’s the thing though. We all enjoy experiences differently. Taking pictures helps me focus on interesting events and primes me to notice more about them. 90% of the time I never look at those photos again but the act of having taken them helps the event stick in my memory longer.
Like taking notes during meeting or whatever. It’s a mindfulness device.
This argument get brought up quite a lot, but rarely by someone sharing his own experience which is interesting.
I never really felt like this. Snapping a photo takes a few seconds and I can continue enjoying whatever I was doing, not that I'm not enjoying taking a photo :) To me it's just shrink-wrapping my mood.
Because photographs are most powerful as a store of/trigger for memories, and my photographs are better at that than someone else's, for the most part.
I agree that people take an abundance of photos and videos that they rarely or never look at them again. I have short term memory so taking the occasional photo here and there helps bring back memories though.
Yeah I think the optimal process is to take a quick photo and then put the camera away. Record the memory, then get back to living it.
I’ve also generally found that even bad photos are good enough for triggering memories, and so the important thing is to take a photo, any photo, and not obsess over the details. (At least for photos you’re primarily taking for personal reasons.)
And to elevate oneself socially based on select signalling of goods and services consumed, places visited and activities performed.
The photos will happily sit on a device, external storage or the printed page for occasional review but let's be honest here: it has less worth unless others see it. It's not the memory-trigger aspect that's so important but the feeling people get from knowing others are admiring what they're doing. The act is mostly for signalling.
Some people forget the era where you typically didn't have a camera everywhere you went, and when you did have a camera you were limited by the amount of film you had. I remember that time and have plenty of vivid memories from it thanks to carrying the best camera I've ever owned: my eyes.
the cost to the experience is minimal
For the people capturing the moment perhaps. In Versailles I was whacked in the head with a selfie stick by a pirouetting halfwit. People fumbling with their phones and selfie sticks aren't considerate of the people around them.
Photos capture pixels. You get attached to it, like some people get attached to other inanimate objects (trinkets, lockets, and so on). It seems hard to believe people need these things to summon memories, but to each his own, I guess.
>For some people it's not about quality, that's for photographers. A lot of people just like memories and photos of the kids playing at this place and that place might not make great photos but they are still important to the people.
10 photos of an event or place will do. 500 or 1000 are not necessary, even if you do it for the "memories". If the memories where worthwhile, a few pictures can evoke them just fine. If they were not, one million pictures wouldn't help.
>My daughter takes photos of her pets all the time, her iPhone is full all the time. They aren't great photos and they are highly repetitive but they are important to her.
Having one or two pictures from a trip helps me to remember how I felt when I was on that trip, sort of a concrete reminder of a moment that I would otherwise forget.
Taking picture however, takes me forever as I'm a bit obsessive about framing the shot and would check 3 or 4 different angels before I do it.
Interesting. I forgot who said that in your best moments you don't have time for anything else. Indeed if you don't take pics it might just be because it was deeply interesting and not worth taking your smartphone out of your pocket.
I can see both sides of this argument and I'm not sure I fall squarely on one of them. I've been on both ends of this.
While I have been on vacations and taken a lot of photos I enjoy while on them, there is something to be said for being present for the experience. That's why, I typically set aside a certain amount of time to take photos, and then I put the camera away. Now, with smartphone cameras, I feel more inclined to take photos of every experience and post them, and I have had second thoughts when doing so- feeling less than present and more involved in putting it on display for others. I guess it's the social aspect that is causing this- taking photos for photos' sake, just for one's own use, I guess is at least somewhat different? Not sure.
It's the same thing that frustrates me about people that take pictures the entire time during a concert. They're missing the experience so they can capture a fraction of it for later instant-reminiscence. What happened to just actually having the experience instead? Sure, snap a shot or two and then enjoy the show, but why watch an entire live experience through a viewfinder or the back of a camera, when it's right there in front of you?
1) when there's maybe couple photos available 2) when you have 4GB of the same session, with multiple burst shots.
I'd even argue that having 1 photo of a certain event brings you back memories of most what happened at that certain time IF you spent it there fully - meaning not jerking around most of the time with a camera/mobile phone taking photos.
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