On Not Carrying a Camera – Cultivating memories instead of snapshots

There must be a balance.

Recently I met some people that were constantly filming and taking pictures of everything. It was ridiculous IMO, for the same reasons OP mentions.

This is not new. For me, it began with the rise of the smartphone. So I made it a point not to waste my time photographing things.

10 years later, I regret having essentially no pictures of anything. In particular, no "good" or "frameable" pictures (blurry pictures from funny angles don't count...). Especially from important moments. Yes, I was there living the moment. But with a picture, I could relive it for a bit.

It's not hard to find the balance, though, I guess. You don't have to constantly be filming everything. Maybe just get the group together for one picture at the end of the event and that's it. Good enough.

That's what'll I try from now on at least. Report back in 10 years...

I've noticed the "live in the moment" crowd is funnily enough the one that least lives in the moment. They are the first to notice how many people around them are taking pictures or posing or looking "ridiculous", worrying how themselves would look if they did the same, sometimes wanting deep down to do the same but held back by their own perceived judgement of others potentially turning on them.

I had a friend that spend a concert mad that someone was filming with an iPad on his peripheral vision. Kept talking about it and was the main topic when reviewing the concert to other friends.

Just live your life, you want to take pictures do, you don't don't, you want to post your whole life in Instagram do. Life is whatever you want it to be.

> Were they worth it, those childbirth photographs? Did they turn out well? One did. Only one

Three angles:

A - For that one picture that's worth you might need to take a dozen.

Or sometimes 60 in burst mode. Liking to take photos in the first place makes it a different exercise and one might spend more effort and be more critical of that one good photo, but I'd assume people not that into photo will also need more sample to find the ones they really like.

B - You only know which one turns out well after the fact. I'd push it further: if you want to live in the moment and not be pixel peeping next to your newborn, you better not care too much about the result and just snap at every chance, especially as you won't be handling you camera while holding your kid.

And that's the same for every occasion. Just snapping a bunch of pictures when it's less distracting is to me the best strategy yet.

C - Unsurprisingly the pictures I absolutely loved weren't the same as my kid's for instance. A decade later he actually looked at his birth photo, and stopped for almost a minute at each one of them, and the one that hit him the most wasn't his. but a random shot of his mother looking at him. I'd feel so sorry if I didn't take that shot, it was horribly framed and totally unthought, but that's the one that hit him. Btw I'm in almost none of these shots, didn't think of it and wouldn't have cared to at the time.

My wife and I went on a giant trip a couple of years back. I took tens of thousands of pictures. They're now our Apple TV background.

Every time a new photo comes on the slideshow, it sparks a memory and moment of joy.

It's like the trip is paying dividends.

Of course I wasn't glued to my camera and still enjoyed it, but there's definitely a balance, and I'd err on the side of overrecording. Especially if the memories can pop up every now and then.

To each their own but as someone with a terrible long term memory I find that pictures and journaling absolutely help me look back into the years and not have terrible voids of mind.

Also do take pictures of the mundane and everyday life, I actually started leaving a go pro in the corner of the room during lazy Sunday pancakes, or school runs, or occasional in the evening to catch interesting conversations with my kids when they are more mellow just before bedtime.

When I was younger I only really had pictures of travel and holidays and days/nights out. There is so much beauty in everyday stuff around the home and around your city. Your daily 'routine', is as much part of your life as the interrail you did in your 20's.

I’d always wanted to go to Korea. I was so excited. I set out to explore and forgot my phone in the hotel.

I walked around Seoul for twelve hours that day and experienced so many wonderful things. I remember them all vividly now, years later, but I have no photos of it.

It was a relief to not document everything. I appreciated everything as a one-step process instead of a two-step process. I could just feel amazed, instead of feel amazed and hold up my camera to record it. Besides, how often do I look at those photos later, anyway? I find it more useful to refer to my journal of how I felt, instead of what I saw.

A few times, GPS could have helped, but because I didn’t have it, I had to go ask strangers for directions. Getting lost led me down some great little back roads I never would have found if I was following the map.

So now I intentionally travel without a phone.

I feel free and untethered. A break from connection.

Where you are is partially defined by where you are not. When you’re somewhere, you’re not somewhere else. But when you use your phone, you’re everywhere. You keep in touch with friends. You hear what’s going on at home. You see the screen exactly as you do anywhere else.

It’s wonderful to be cut off from everywhere else — to be more fully only there.

And it’s so nice to not know the time or where I am. Clocks and maps are useful inventions, but I see a moment better without them.

I appreciate a moment more when I know I’ll never see it again. I remember that day in Seoul better than I remember most photo-filled travels.

I find that the act of taking those pictures helps me remember the scene better. It's like back in school days when some professors allowed students to bring a small cheat sheet or card to the exams -- it's not so much the fact that you are allowed to bring auxiliary memory, but the act of preparing those notes helps you study better. I rarely made use of those cheat sheets during exams, and I rarely take the time to review old photos that I have taken.

I also bring a camera just because it feels like a security blanket of sorts, because you never know if something is going to come up, and the phone's wide angle lens might be insufficient.

I take photos so I can go back to them as a different person and see details I didn't see the first time.

I first visited Chicago in 2006 and took a bunch of pictures. It was all a blur to me.

Later I became a Chicago resident in 2017, and suddenly those pictures had a new meaning for me. I began to appreciate the details more. Some things didn't change (Metra tickets were clipped on top of the seat in 2006, and it still was in 2019). But the UChicago campus had evolved since my first visit in 2006. Evanston had also changed greatly.

As a new Chicagoan in 2017, it was cool for me look at 2006 pictures again with new eyes and new knowledge (e.g. I now knew the Chicago grid system, the dibs system, that deep dish isn't actually that deep, that the quality of Harolds' Chicken Shack is branch specific, etc.).

I've taken photos on and off for decades. Too many here seem to be, much like everything else these days, all or nothing. With just a little bit of common sense/discipline it is pretty easy to balance the taking of photos with the "being there" experience. This especially applies to cell phone snapshots. You don't need to be taking tens or hundreds of shots to document an experience. A handful or less will do.

I struggle to relate to this. I have aphantasia, which means I can’t see anything in my mind’s eye.

This is most painful when I try to “imagine” my wife’s face, my family, friends, favorite parts of nature, etc, but am left with nothing.

For me, this means that I struggle to remember things from my past beyond major life events. Even major events can be fuzzy for me.

As a result, I’ve always tried to snap quick pictures of what I’m doing, even if it means I have to “step away” from enjoying the moment for a brief second.

A few months ago, I loaded my 30k+ pics (across ~10 yrs) stored on a hard drive into an Immich instance. I can now easily look at those pictures and remember my past in a way that I simply couldn’t beforehand.

This has been an unbelievable improvement in QoL through an improved self-identity, remembrance of my past, and reconnection with memories of lost loved ones.

I can agree with the author on the disruptive nature of picture taking. But for me, none of what I listed above would be possible without capturing my memories in moderation and with pointed intent.

I’m an occassional photo taker, mostly because i dont like the way i look and i suffer from mild and flaring depression at times.

However when i look back to the photos from the past im happy i took them because my memory fails me or sometimes skews things.

i am happy i have these photos.

I like to take [not very good] landscape photos. The reality is (at least for someone whose not very good) landscape photography often involves getting to specific places at weird times (often before dawn or exactly at dinner time) setting up your camera, and staring through the viewfinder for an hour or so, and snapping off shots as lighting and conditions slightly change.

While I often enjoy this experience, this just is not compatible with hanging out with people who aren’t into it. Your friends/partners will hate you. Your kids just will not stand for it in anyway.

I’ve gotten some photos I like doing this (when my friends/family were not present), but coming home from a family vacation, the photos I enjoy more are almost always the random snapshots of my kids taken in 2 seconds on my iPhone.

I picked up photography for a bit and definitely lived in the lens for about 2 years. What broke me out of it, I got the idea of a sunrise shot. I stayed up all night, left home about 2am. I hiked through the woods to find 150+ people already there with the same idea. I didn't know it until I asked, but there was a parking lot 100 yards from where I was at. I looked around just really confused, waited for the perfect light. I took the shot, deleted it and went home. I didn't press down the shutter button for 5+ years after that.

Now that cell phones exist and I got a super powerful camera in my pocket at all times. I really enjoy taking snapshots. Which for non-photographers are the lowest quality of photos that someone takes(1 out of 5). Occasionally, I'll do a trip to take a picture of something, but I tone down the seriousness of it and make sure that i'm not doing more than enjoying the moment and taking a snapshot. What I really missed was getting out there, it wasn't the photography. The photography just forced me to get out there.

Photographs help jog your memory. That's why I take them at least...

Please take as many photographs as possible. I never took any pictures while traveling. Partly as I am not photogenic, that inferiority complex stayed with me.

Now for the pictures I took, Me and my daughter spent 2 hours ruminating at those pictures this weekend. Nothing can beat that happiness

Oh, I do remember I was thinking like this in high school, "live through the moment, don't take pictures".

I didn't account for my memory being shot even in my 30s. I would love to have a couple of photos or videos of some events, but I don't, and I can no longer remember what it was like at all.

Computer SSD can hold more books than all books you ever saw in your life.

saw, not read, saw in movies, saw in photographs, saw in magazines. all that can fit into your SSD

So just make freaking daily journal. there is plenty of space. You will be surprised what everything you did forgot. you will be surprised how your brain worked few years back. etc etc

And computer can hold more and retrieve faster then any other mechanism.

Also most wealthy people i know have their own "CRM system", where they note contents of phone calls, meetings etc, it is even easier with current state of AI/ML transcription services. They note names of children, spouse of their business partners. Hobbies, life situations, birthdays.... and they WILL look you up, right before you enter their office for joint meeting, so they can have conversation with you...

on the flipside, while I don't take pictures all the time, I do feel like I remember the situations in which I took pictures better.. There are two sides to this: The situation was out of the ordinary to begin with, which is why the picture was taken. But also, the act of taking the picture helps me commit it to memory, the same way writing something down means I am more likely to remember it, even if I never read the notes.

I'm not taking the picture to capture the immense beuaty of a landcape, or the magic of a sitaution, I'm not a good enough photographer, and if it's any place worth shooting, there will be much better pictures available of it online anways. I take pictures to document, not as proof, but as an anchor point, so I can remember who, and where. Having a picture of just the landscape does not matter, but having one with the people I'm with, in that landscape, matters.. I can remember travels from "oh, these people were definitely there, because I remember taking a picture of them"

I'm a designer by profession but the majority of my actual schooling was in photography. Capturing a great visual moment feels second nature to me and the process feels so involuntary that you'd rarely even notice I've taken a photo. You can absolutely live in the moment and still have something to show for it.

This just feels like the usual throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater style backlash toward over-saturation of anything and everything. Yes, there are people who live in their phones. Yes, there are people who take so many photos and videos of what's around them that they fail to actually experience those things in the moment.

The solution isn't to throw away our technology. It's to develop better habits and better relationships with what we use to enhance our lives. Because that's the point: to enhance our lives, not to diminish them. If you feel that your tech is diminishing your life, that's probably a sign that you need to re-examine how you use it. Throwing it away entirely is a wasteful response that might "fix" the diminishing effects, but will also deprive you of the enhancements.

Before smartphones (and/or decent camera phones), I used to carry a small point-and-shoot digital camera with me nearly everywhere. I loved having it with me, and friends always enjoyed when I'd share photos of moments where most people would never think to bring a camera to capture. Being able to ditch that camera and instead use an often-better smartphone camera has been so freeing and wonderful. But I don't live behind the screen of my phone; I snap photos quickly, and rarely take video (though lately I've been disappointed in the lack of video over the past decade, so I'm re-evaluating my stance there).

We can have a healthy relationship with our phones. Commercial interests of course want us to be glued to them 24/7, but that's not how it has to be.

(And I feel like the author of this piece maybe doesn't even disagree with me; he says he still takes snapshots on his phone in his hometown. He's more talking about the mindset he gets into when he has a "real" camera: one of detachment from his surroundings.)

Interesting to see what I feel like is a big disconnect between the article and the comments.

In my interpretation the author of the article is doing this almost more out of respect for those around him than himself. As a photographer he was always preoccupied with looking for a good shot rather than enjoying the company he was with.

Even when he talks about the pictures of his child’s birth he looks at it through the lens of a professional photographer - it’s not about the memories attached to the photos, it’s about the composition being ‘generic’ vs the photo saying something interesting.

I feel like this article is really more about work/life balance than taking out your phone to grab a snapshot. That’s just how I read it. Also what a sad ending.

Because everyone is exactly the same, right?

So you should just live your life but if you have aphantasia then sucks to be you. You won’t reminisce memories because some random dude on internet says so.

Leaky abstractions everywhere.

I think David Lynch nailed it in Lost Highway:

-

Ed: Do you own a video camera?

Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them.

Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way.

Ed: What do you mean by that?

Fred Madison: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.

-

I used to own a DSLR, it was great for planned shots when settings things up for something special (e.g. my dog in mid air jumping over a fallen tree in the woods).

It's a nice hobby but I lost interest and now I just shoot stuff randomly with my iPhone.

It's a nice thing to have, but I think there's a purpose in forgetting, keeping track of everything can become a burden.

We're too obsessed with this, people can't even take a jog any longer without tracking pulse, calories, route etc.

It's too much, and it's making many of us miserable.

I like taking photos. Not to an excessive amount, but I do think it's important to capture memories with people. I recently went through Google Photos with my partner and we had so much fun looking back at our year together. Each month had maybe 10 photos, but each of those photos was full of so much history and stories.

I don't have many big regrets, but one of the few I have is not having enough photographs or videos from my teenage years to share with my partner and future generations.

I was on a vacation with a gf 10 years ago or so, and we had a rented car and were driving across [European country] and we had taken a lot of photos and I just started feeling like we were focused on the camera too much instead of just experiencing where we were. So I said "let's put the cameras away and let's just be in the moment".

so we did. and 30 seconds later we saw something incredible and I screamed "GETTTTTT THE CAAAAAMERAAAA!"

for the rest of our vacation, that was our tagline. You can't live outside the time you live in. Everything is a trade off. We enjoyed the trip a lot.

Wow. This sounds to me like someone saying,"Don't make flashcards to learn a language, just remember the words!"

Flashcards help. They aren't a substitute for learning the language, but flashcards definitely help.

Pictures help me remember many, many things!

There were quite a few odd things said in this article, and they all seem, for the most part, like a Ted talk: a lot of flash, but very little substance, especially when reality has to be taken into account.

I still carry camera everywhere. Since I'm into abstract shapes (not documentary/storytelling etc etc), I don't really care about "cultivating memories".

As long as you are willing to "see", usually there's something interesting to be captured. Imagine solving a puzzle. It doesn't have to be relevant to your daily life, but super fun, nonetheless.

I actually took up photography as a hobby when I was a teen. Set up a darkroom and everything. Somewhere along the way in life realized I never looked at my photos. So I just stopped taking them and never really missed it. I do use my phone camera as sort of a notepad when that is handy. E.g. if I’m working on something and I want to document which parts go where, or to send to someone and ask “what is this” but I usually delete them after they’ve served their purpose.

I am old enough to remember not only when phones didn't have cameras, but we didn't carry phones at all. In those days, it was somewhat unusual to carry your film camera with you everywhere, and it would have been remarkable (rude even) to be constantly taking photos. Not to mention it would get expensive quickly. But what a loss! Times change and memories fade...

Sketchbook. And pencil… or watercolor… or whatever you can get your hands on. It’s true a picture lasts longer. The memory of the place and experience of creating the image with your own hands does too.

Memories fade. Heck, I totally forgot about a trip I made two weeks ago.

At some point you learn to take pictures to evoke memories.

The real question is, do you remember the memory or the picture?

This really made me think. While I don't plan on not carrying my camera any time soon. I do plan on enjoying the moment first rather than trying to click a picture first.

Alternatively: sometimes I bring a film camera. Makes taking a photo a much more intentional action, since each picture costs about $1 end-to-end.

The article doesn't really say anything about the "cultivating memories" part. I find that living in the moment, plus writing down shortly after is the best way for me to remember things with high fidelity.

I rarely take pictures for memories, but rather to create art to share. If I think the photograph will be a work of art, then I'll go through the effort to capture it. If not, I just don't bother and focus on the experience.

I've found that many special moments, excursions to special places, are best experienced exactly that way, in the moment, without fiddling with that camera app and being behind the viewfinder. In fact, look at any live footage of a large event with a V.I.P., such as a popular politician, a rock star, or the Holy Father, working the crowd of tourists. Now look at all those unfortunate people who are behind viewfinders. They are still electronically mediated, even though they're only a few inches from the very person they admire so much. Isn't it truly sad that they're struggling to get some "ShakyCam" footage that would get any newscaster fired, instead of reaching their hand out, smiling, seeing that scene unfold before their actual eyes?

Therefore there are many events where I won't bring a camera. I'll experience it as it unfolds. It's more rewarding that way. In fact, many large events are already so well-covered by a professional camera crew -- why bother? I mean, I'll just go look it up later on Facebook anyway, right?

My current exception is astrophotography; firstly possible to see bodies that are much, much fainter with the assistance of the smartphone camera. The photos reveal details I could never detect with an unassisted eye. For example, last year's big comet: I stood at an intersection to sight it, and it was invisible until I pointed my camera in that direction. And astrophotography is a nice technical means of stargazing in specific ways with a specific field of view and live time constraints. I mean, if I really want to see a huge arbitrary starfield, there are plenty of apps that can simulate it for me. But if I curate my own star photographs, I can edit them, add notes, and share them around.

As a life long photographer one of the most crucial skills to have in photography that are mostly independent from the tech is the knowledge and wisdom when to pull out the camera and when not.

A great photographer can pull out the camera at one anticipated moment, already have the moment and the picture in their heads, since they know their gear and then do it. This is of course the polar opposite of just shooting everything and hoping something will stick which is the approach many people seem to take today. Sometimes I wonder whether they even take the time to wade through the bullshit pictures after..

That being said, as a photographer I like smartphone cameras, since the best camera is the one you have around. But in most situations photographing without asking is disrespectful anyways, so it is reserved for the special occasion and then I try to crystalize the moment into few good photos instead of ruining it with running around and covering everything.

When I read about this topic, I’m always reminded of David Lynch’s Lost Highway:

Ed: Do you own a video camera? Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them. Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way. Ed: What do you mean by that? Fred Madison: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.

I think moderation is key. With a modern smartphone with a camera button, it’s not a burden to take a few quick pictures while still being in the moment.

I certainly enjoy having a few pictures and maybe a short video of a concert to help stimulate my brain later on when I’m reflecting on the experience. But then I put my phone down and enjoy myself, and to try to not be rude to anyone else (and I hold my camera no higher than my face).

I also think that with modern stabilization it’s easy to be taking decent videos while not being too focused on operating your camera.

The biggest challenge I have with this technological age is that even healthily moderate documentation becomes a data management nightmare. It feels like I’m constantly deleting irrelevant photos and pruning my library and it’s still far too big.