Do these super talented artistic photographers see the photos they take, even once, after they have taken it?
Nope, similarly the affect of using cameras in museums has been studied before. In real life it's pretty blatantly obvious that 99% of people don't go to museums and galleries for their interest any more, it's all about being pretentious and shoving as many pictures on facebook as possible so their friends think they are cultured. every time I go there are people who never look away from their phone, just take a picture, next, take a picture, next... all the way.
I find it difficult not to be disgusted by it. If all they really wanted was a picture they could have bought a book far more easily, but they don't want a picture, and they aren't interested, they just want to put it on facebook.
I try to ignore them but they often try to make you get out of the way for their important pictures of EVERYTHING if you dare to appreciate something with your actual eyeballs for more than 20 seconds.
Ok enough this thread is not helping my attitude towards people.
Getting a photo book wouldn't help me though. I like to take photos of many things that tourist photos don't show: random city streets, bicycles, vending machines, cars, graffiti, other tourists, locals, shopping districts, residential districts, trains, signs, Apple stores, grocery stores, etc. I like to try to capture what life is really like in a place, good and bad, and a book of tourist photos isn't going to show you that.
That's great, it's good to take photos like that as a tourist and I wouldn't judge anyone taking photos of any kind in that whole category. But to be clear, i'm talking about something quite different, they are not photos, they are just an extension of social network selfies, "proof I was here", it's about excessive concern with self-image and nothing else - when taken to the extreme in the ways I so commonly see now, it has absolutely no relation to how one takes a genuine photo to capture happy moments, personally unique interests etc when visiting or exploring. These other people have become the extremities of a robot feeding an algorithm.
Think of photography in that situation like a hobby, just like people might want to learn programming languages or whatever. There’s a personal sport to it - challenging yourself to get a great shot or document what you’ve seen. Each to their own.
Actually, you don't: I usually just take a picture of them taking the photo of the girlfriend.
As for flashes, these days with everyone using their smartphones, the phones are smart enough to usually not activate the flash when you're outside. It's not as bad as the "old days" when I used to see dumb tourists with disposable film cameras taking flash photos of the Grand Canyon at night, thinking somehow they were going to light up the entire canyon.
And yeah, trashing is a never ending issue. You should see the early morning clean up at Times Square, on new year's day - it is quite a sight