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Comment by psychomugs | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the optimal living-documenting ratio was right before the advent of digital cameras: photography was accessible enough, but there was enough disconnect between the event and the record to be present. Now it's much easier to live through the phone's what-you-see-is-what-you-get viewfinder [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27697921

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Related to this: it worries me that on vacation it seems my relationship with sight seeing is mainly through the phone's camera. I'm constantly seeing opportunities to take pretty snapshots, I worry that people "get in the way", I wonder about the sun messing with my photo...

...and in the end I forget to enjoy the view. Before digital cameras and mobile phones, I would just marvel at the view and enjoy it. Now I only really see it when I'm back home, flipping through digital photos (and sometimes not even that, how many photos we take that we never look at again?).

I like making photos of landscapes as a hobby. I have a big dSLR camera, nice digital p&s, and my phone. Every time I go out (eg. on a hike) I have to force myself to consider if this is a "photo trip" or a "leisure trip". Am I going to be switched on, take a ton of gear, and be trying to make photos? Or am I going worry less about it, try to enjoy the moment and maybe grab a few non critical snapshots with whatever I have (usually just phone).

Even when going someplace new as a tourist, it's tempting to worry too much about photos. If I really want to play the aspiring travelling landscape photographer it would be work, a lot of it.

With a modern phone camera, for the purpose of a "I was here, I did/saw this" snapshot for posterity, it's pretty hard to mess up a photo so bad that it is worthless as long as it's pointed in the right direction. Take a few shots, but don't worry too much about quality or quantity.

There's been some studies on the effects of this which have been mixed for-or-against [1-3].

I do a lot of photography and this is a conundrum that many in my circle are aware of. My solutions:

- Use a (pseudo)rangefinder camera like a Leica or Fujifilm X100/X-Pro with an optical viewfinder. Even pre-digital SLRs would subject you to, in the moment of photographing, looking at the photograph. With an uncoupled optical viewfinder, you look at life [4]. While the photograph is a powerful simulacrum, it is not life itself; the wall-sized print of the sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji that hangs in my living room is merely a visual paraphrase of the experience.

- Shooting film and the friction that goes into handling, developing, scanning, and (hopefully, eventually) printing brings some of the Benjaminian aura back to the visual record [5].

- Reading about Japanese aesthetics, specifically the notions of imperfections and impermanence, has helped me be more present and aware of the transience of the moment [6].

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976135044...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22113...

[3] https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/74825

[4] https://youtu.be/kueqi8A3LQc?t=254

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...

[6] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/911856.A_Tractate_on_Jap...

There were people like this before digital cameras. My father was one of them with his Canon A-1 SLR.

Agreed! But before phones, taking a camera and gear with you was so much trouble you often decided against it. Now taking a phone with you it's the default, and this makes taking photos frictionless, which brings me back to my original point.

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