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...

Missing a moment because you were "fiddling with your camera" is relatable. So inspiring is also the view looking out over the LCD ocean at a concert. It's easy to think that this tool is disconnecting us from the moment.

But I'm here to offer a different perspective as I get to go to the zoo every day. For the first couple months in went no camera, only rarely taking a phone picture. Then I decided to get back into photography, something I hadn't been into since 35mm.

The whole experience changed, and I became more connected with the animals. While everyone around me is thinking "oh boring, the animal is not doing anything" I'm thinking "oh look at that twitch.. if I just am a little more patient I can get the shot" I'm the only one looking at the animals as they wake up. I've even made a 30 second rule, where I keep video rolling for 30 seconds after I've personally lost interest.

Not only has photography brought me closer to the animals, it has been a philosophical exercise in patience, grace, and remaining in a moment with fixed attention.

The exact opposite of this blog post.

> 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.

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.

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.

As a teenager, I used to regularly say "I'd rather look at life for real than through a view-finder of a camera"

30 years later I now know how wrong I was. I regret not taking photos of everything I could. So many lost memories.

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 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.

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 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.

When you get older, you realize how memories fade, how they disappear, and that’s when you wish you had taken more pictures. I am not talking about young folks shooting photos for the sake of getting likes. I am talking about precious moments, a picture here, a picture there. They will help trigger lost memories. For what is our identity if not a string of recollections we have?

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.

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.)

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.

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'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.

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

I'm in the exact opposite camp. I carry a camera almost everywhere. But, that's the thing: I carry a single purpose device, and almost is the keyword here. There are times when I know my attention is needed elsewhere, and I'd never take that DSLR to my childbirth.

I absolutely love looking at the pictures and sharing them with family. My child is growing and I have a ton of pictures from different times of her life. I regret none of them. The failed ones as well.

Not only they remind me of the tiny beautiful things I saw and experienced, they have their own distinct look which I adore. And you get to do a lot of things: a friend asks you to photograph their handmade product. You get to take group photos at family gatherings which are than shared by everyone. And I'm nowhere near being a professional photographer.

So yeah, I encourage everyone to carry a camera everywhere.

As with anything in life, there is a balance.

I have rekindled my love for the small digital pocket cameras. I love using it when observing every day events unfolding. I try not to let the camera get in the way of my own interactions, like a good conversation when walking with friends or loved ones.

The small 14 year old Samsung W2000 I use is slim enough to easily slide into any pocket, and has a 5x optical zoom that allows me to take really nice pictures and videos from a comfortable distance, allowing life to unfold without the awareness of the presence of a camera.

The pocket camera has just enough megapixels (10) and supports RAW images and 1080p videos. It allows me to leave my smartphone at home, avoiding any distractions when out and about. If I need to be available I bring my old Nokia as well.

I would argue to rather leave your smartphone at home, not your camera :)

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...

In defence of the Polaroid: the novelty is a hit with people, it creates not only lasting memories but souvenirs from a time and a place. They’ve got vintage appeal and the often bad white/colour balance means that the focus of the photos is usually about the people and the moment, and less about the quality of the photography itself. I think they’re kind of the perfect balance.

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.

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

That by using and/or carrying a camera you stop being present in the moment, and that it is somehow mutually exclusive with making memories, is somewhat of a mischaracterisation.

If you are serious about photography with existing light, the act of using the camera and even merely carrying it forces you to, for the lack of better description, see things as they are. It opens your eyes, quiets your chattering brain, stops you from ruminating. It prevents you from being annoyed at the small things and keeps you in the flow.

Once you realize that a particular combination of countless factors—weather, air quality, time of day, time of year, place, angle of view, human or other subjects (or, as I often prefer it, lack thereof)—can create a vanishingly rare, one of a kind image, you just can’t help being in the moment and seeing those things; and once you have got it (captured light and developed it), it can be there with you as an additional memory trigger for years to come.

My village people in the 1960's or 70's hated to be photographed. Heck, they hated even being called by their own name (instead of family name or by relation or by their title etc). Photography is kind of evil. It won't let people to fade away from memories. It's like a plastic that never decomposes. Not only that, it misrepresents people, because people don't remain in same pose, mood or appearance forever. It attaches the person to the photographed appearances more than it does to their un-photographed appearances.

There is nothing wrong in not being photographed and not living in the memories of other people. Even the Kings who were scared of being forgotten and got stone scriptures made with their names, were forgotten.

Despite any amount of persisted media recorded about you that never goes away, you would still be forgotten, as your media would be buried deep under other latest media that fully eats away the attention of the future people.

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.

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.

Like any tech nerds, I went through "camera phase" and carried canon 350d, 50d then 6d everywhere i go with my 50mm and 135mm ... but they were indeed bulky, it was a hassle to get people to pose for photos while i run 100m back so my 135mm can capture them perfectly... i couldn't enjoy the moment, i was that "camera friend" that would fly around everyone like fly, capturing them doing things and feeling proud that i got a good photo for them... But coming back from these trips, i realized i didnt spend enough time strolling the street with friends, talking about life, enjoying the moment so i stopped... especially now with kids.

If only people are not so against camera recording them, i think a rayban meta idea would have been cool but it needs to constantly recording like those car dash cam and when you just shared a perfect funny moment, you can immediately hit save to preserve that moment for later. So many times i wished i recorded the moment my childrens do things or being funny but it was too late.

I love taking photo with phone still and when my wife dress in her favourite coat and the setting is right, i would go back to being the "camera dude" using my best framing technique i learnt to capture the moment, at least the experience from those years did not go to waste.

Last but not least, one of the best purchase i ever done was the insta link wide bluetooth printer... it let me print, sign the date and gift my friends who visit something to take home and put on their fridge to remember the time we spent together.

I think there is a difference between not actually looking at the event/object because you want to make photos (or make a perfect photo), vs just ensuring that essential stuff you see got at least a photo.

Nowadays I make a conscious effort, if I am going for some trip/event, to always make at least one photo, so I can remember it. And by now I have photos arranged in a timeline spanning > 20 years, and it is extremely enjoyable to browse it all to remember.

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.

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 do not like to take pictures with my camera for exactly this reason. I want to be there in the moment instead of thinking about the shot.

I'm also opposed to nearly everything that FB does, but I purchased the Ray-Ban Meta sunglasses a year ago anyway. I was preparing to go on a family vacation and I wanted to test them for staying in the moment while still capturing memories. I also prefer candid images where people aren't posing for the camera but are acting naturally.

The great thing about having a camera on your eyeglasses is that you can still be in the moment; mostly. I do hold more still when I take a picture or shoot a video.

I make people in my party aware that I'm wearing them and that I'll be taking pictures. If I'm in public, however, I won't tell everyone around me. That's usually a case where people with me also have their phones out snapping pictures though, so it's pretty obvious that camera's are going.

I'm still struggling with the privacy implications.

My strategy is to take pictures when I feel like it, leave the camera or phone behind when I don't, and try not to judge people too much for their choices. It works out pretty well.

Though one of the situations where I might judge is if someone spends a lot of time and effort during the birth of their child to get the perfect shot. I can't fathom the reasoning.

There's one photo I didn't take (and really regret not taking) the day Sproutlet was born, a photo of the placenta... it was so vividly full of life, deep red and violet striking in a way I didn't think possible.

I was shocked when the shutter on my Nikon D40 wore out, I didn't know that was a thing. I was really into manually aligned computational photography for the decade I rode the train to Chicago. I've got half a terabyte of photos and short videos. I doubt that sproutlet will want much of it once I'm gone, but the photos helped make friends, and build friendships over the years, and bring me joy when I look back on them.

Long covid took me out of the game, and I'm just starting to get back into it. While they are better than the old point and shoots from the start of the digital camera era, Smartphone Cameras still suck compared to a DSLR when it comes to image composition and just getting the focus on the right thing.

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.

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 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.

People with Aphantasia [1] can have less vivid autobiographical memories [2], so for them it might make sense to make more photos. As usual, this "advice" is rather condescending: I'm a professional photographer and even my photos "weren't worth it" (per the article), so why do you, person of common talent who takes too many photos anyway, even bother?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7308278/

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.

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.

I tend to forget a lot of things, especially good things. Photos help me remember. What did we do for Mother’s Day last year? Remember how small our kid used to be? Photos remind us.

It’s a balance. Recently I was taking a video of my son at the beach. He noticed and said “no phone dad”. I laughed and put it away.

Btw I also got a photo of our son being born during c section. the anesthesiologist offered to take it. So I got best of both worlds: got to be fully present when the curtain dropped and we first saw our son, and got a once in a lifetime photo for him.

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 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.

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.

Sure thing, but I went on a skiing holiday once 20 yrs ago and I have virtually no recollection of any of it, apart from a sense of slushy snow.

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...

You can now take short videos, like 3-10 sec. They look more alive. That's what I'm doing in addition to photos. 8k looks great and I can select the best 32M frame if needed.

In general with practice you'll stop thinking much while taking pictures. You'll learn to 'see' the moment. It just becomes like a part of experience.

… this is incredibly wrong headed. People forget. Even when we promise we will remember, we forget. And what we remember is often false and distorted; more so with every revisit.

Take snapshots and souvenirs to aid and anchor your memory. Take careful photographs to adorn your walls and communicate to others.

But don’t film concerts. There is no upside

I would really like to have a (better) version of the Google Clips [0]: A compact camera I can clip on to capture some moments without me having to think about it, with a little bit of AI to identify good scenes to capture.

Unfortunately the device was rather weak in picture quality and also flopped, so it seems nothing came after it.

For now I settled on a (also quite outdated) DxO-One for that purpose, a very compact no-display camera with great hardware, just for quickly capturing a moment without disrupting it. It's a great little gem with fantastic sensor and lens for its (now) ~110 USD pricetag (and also has some hacking-potential [1])

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Clips

[1] https://github.com/rickdeck/DxO-One/wiki

In my life, I have battled two severe and life-threatening illnesses. Despite emerging victorious and preserving my life, the relentless pursuit of medical interventions and treatments had a profound and detrimental impact on my cognitive abilities.

I take a lot of photos and videos. I get looked at funny. It’s ok.

Frequently, people inquire about my motivations for taking photographs, wearing meta glasses, and consistently capturing whatever interests me.

They don’t know at some point in the foreseeable future, viewing these photographs and videos becomes the sole source of emotions and memories from the past that I am unable to access voluntarily in the quantities and durations I desire with the damage to my brain that comes with surviving, and I think in that context what I do and enjoy is not unreasonable. I’m not a glasshole.

So the next time you see someone making excessive use of their phone camera or even a more traditional one keep in mind you know nothing about them and their lives.

They could have a perfectly fine reason for what they are doing and your only job is to get out the way or smile if you get asked if you want to be in the photo.

I’m probably in a million photos of Japanese tourists and I enjoy the thought that someone in Japan shows the photo I took of them to friends and family and says I remember this guy, he was friendly and took this photo of us I really like and then we made one together. Germans are good people.

Photography doesn’t need words or translations, it speaks for itself and therefore is able to build bridges between cultures. I find that beautiful.

Also nobody can watch my memories when I’m dead when they are on meat storage only.

If my nieces ever want to find out who their uncle was when they get older they will have an endless stream of material to access and a portal to my view of the past as it was the present, and hopefully make better decisions than we do currently.

A very interesting post. I don't generally take photographs for religious reasons, other than for a mundane purpose (government IDs, taking pictures of receipts for an app, that sort of thing). I started following this shortly before my first trip to Israel.

Before I did that, my goal would have simply been to take as many pictures as possible to share with my friends elsewhere. But now that I was committed to not doing this, I instead had to simply treasure every sight and commit it to memory.

In retrospect, I am glad I did this. COVID permanently changed the landscape of things including in the Middle East. October 7 unfortunately changed many other things. I still have my memories, though, of some of the most ancient cities and civilisations and cultures in the world, some of which are irreplaceable.

The point of the Narrative Clip (https://getnarrative.com) was to let people both live in the moment AND capture it. It was launched at the height of the life-logger/wearable conjunction 10 years ago, but it's still an interesting idea and the thought of having a more thorough "log" of your life might get more and more relevant the closer we get to vivid AI-recreations and even brain augmentation.

Some customers also just had bad memory and loved sort of re-living their day every evening which made memories store more efficiently in the brain.

There are social "contracts" that the users need to consider when using stuff like this though, as you do take photos of those around you or who you interact with..

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.

> Cultivating memories instead of snapshots

I started looking for alternatives to standalone cameras and Smartphones for exactly that reason.

Especially when spending time with my kids I wanted to stop disrupting a situation by aiming a camera or keep holding a smartphone (also, I don't want my toddler to learn that a Smartphone is always part of every experience).

So I started looking for a small compact camera I can just pull out, roughly aim at a scene and take plenty of pictures for later, with minimal disruption of the moment. Everything except battery and a good sensor/lens is optional.

GoPro's were my first thought, but I didn't like the fishlens fixed-focus of the pictures. Sony has a compact cam-only device called the RX0, but it's also fixed-focus and I wasn't that sure how well it would fit my needs.

After some searching I found an AWESOME gem of a little camera: The DxO One, a camera from back in 2016 from DxO, a company specialized in benchmarking cameras.

At some point a decade ago, DxO decided that they should make a camera, and went out to build a really high-end iOS-attachable camera (1" sensor of Sony RX100, Auto-Focus, mechanical Iris (!), f/1.8 lens, microSD, Wi-Fi,...) [0].

Initial price-point of the DxO-One was ~700 USD, the device flopped, was dropped in price and later discontinued. The camera is still great, and can still be bought NEW for ~110USD now.

Size is fantastic, Pictures are great, I can only recommend it if someone just wants to capture a moment like it is without people getting pulled out of it.

The device is also somewhat hackable, as it's based on the Ambarella platform (RTOS and Linux).

I started collecting infos about it to preserve it [1], there's still alot of potential in this little gem.

[0]: https://github.com/rickdeck/DxO-One/wiki/1.-Hardware

[1]: https://github.com/rickdeck/DxO-One/wiki

Total false dichotomy. I'm a photographer and carry a camera most places I go. Even without the camera up to my eye, photography helps me see the moment—noticing what's happening physically and emotionally in everyday scenes.

My memory is bad. Without the photos, some of those scenes would literally cease to exist in my mind. Not that I need to capture and relive every moment… But some of those moments only become interesting or valuable with the passing of time, or the context of new events.

But photography is like any art—you can use it to focus, or to distract.

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 will say this works up until about 38 years old. My memory just isn't what it used to be. A few photographs every once in awhile help me remember neat events that happened I would otherwise not recall without prompting.

Instead of taking a photo to prove to other people you were at a place and gain likes, take a photo to remind yourself of an emotion. (another words, don't take pictures _just_ to post to social media)

I treat it just like I did back in the 80s and 90s; I tell myself that each good photo costs a quarter to develop. After vacations, I have around 10-15 quality pictures.

I think phones/snapshot culture definitely creates a lack of engagement. It's more of a photo to say "I was there" than for any particular purpose. But creative photography, as an artform, actually connects you to your subjects and engages you in a way which doesn't happen approaching the same situation without the camera. The camera is just a tool, and its your intent that matters.

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 is absolutely a "trend" (been going on for years now) in nightclubs in Berlin. Almost none of them allow photography of any sort, and will sticker up your phone at the entrance to remind you.

When you are taking photos or even thinking of doing it, you are not living in the moment.

When I go to clubs in other countries, the difference is really stark. People aren't actually dancing and don't look like they're having fun.

Capturing memories and moments can be a thing. Not just the only thing.

A nice and passive tool for capturing moments can be something like a 360 camera: https://old.reddit.com/r/Insta360/comments/xazd2o/anyone_her...

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.

Taking photos is part of how I stay engaged. I've always caught flak from friends for taking so many photos. Oddly enough, they seem to forget thar attitude when they're poring over the collection of photos of themselves later.

I've not missed nearly as much by taking photos as others have while performatively objecting to me taking photos.

There was a study showing that memory and recall improved when people were encouraged to take pictures. I feel the same. I need to get organized with photos and videos though and thus I hardly take pictures and life feels a blur.

It is funny that we are reading this now and it makes sense. Imagine in the future where LLM/Diffusion agents are the norms. We will get blog about "No Not using LLM -- Cultivating your critical thinking skills/(coding or whatever fill in the blank tasks that we eventually figure how to get machines to do on our behave"

One of the only real fights I've ever had with my wife was over taking too many pictures. We'd arrive somewhere new, and the kid and I would be excited to see it and explore, only to get yelled at to stand this way or pose that way. I finally snapped and said we're done with photos, do what you want, I just keep the memories in my head anyways. That's completely true, but less clear as I get older, admittedly.

I feel bad because she takes great photos and I look forward to seeing them. I just hate when the photo becomes more important than the experience. How to balance this seems to be the point in question.

>A few minutes earlier, I’d taken out my camera and checked my light meter. Good, the room was bright enough. I could shoot at one-one-hundred-twenty-fifth of a second. Not much blur. I looked around for the proper angle from which to photograph the birth. Unfortunately, the doctors and nurses, who were moving quickly, even urgently, kept getting in my way. I moved here and there. What if a nurse blocked my view? I couldn’t say “Move,” but I wanted to. My frustration mounted. Nobody paid any attention to me. Then, looking through the viewfinder—there, within the rectangle of a potential photograph—I saw my wife’s face contract in pain. Multiple emotions flooded through me, but the one I identified first was the photographer’s “Yes!,” and I immediately pressed the shutter. Then, a minute later, when the doctor held a wriggling infant in the air, I pressed it again.

>Over the next few days, I thought about my son’s birth. I was in the room when it happened, but was I really there, or had I been hiding behind my camera?

Thing is, the photo taking experience can be as involved as all of that or it can be as simple as taking my phone out of my pocket, double tapping the power button, pointing it at the thing and hitting another button. All over and done with in a few seconds, I get to participate in the moment overall but I also get my little totem that will help me relive memories of the moment later. I think that the author is in a personal backlash because of this disconnection with a moment they believed to be of profound importance, but I think this isn't the camera's fault. In talking about how the birth of your child can be a moment of life or death, a tipping point between extraordinary joy and unrecoverable sorrow, the author reveals what I think is the true issue behind their mildly obsessive photo-taking: control. They can't make the baby come sooner. They can't guarantee the baby or the mother will survive the birth unscathed. But what they can do is make sure the lighting is right, the shutter speed is dialed in, the right lens is used, the right framing and blocking is applied and the right moment picked. All things that they can control, but that necessarily take them out of the situation (because the situation is uncontrollable, so you must exit it in order to gain any sort of power).

I think the author was using their camera to compensate for their anxiety and is now using the idea of intentionally not carrying a camera to compensate for the sense of loss they felt after trying to distract themselves from the anxiety of the moment and ending up distracting themselves from the entire moment.

I usually take one picture of an occasion. And there might be one or two events that qualify as occasions each month. That way, some trigger for the memory is created, but picture-taking does not get in the way of experiencing things.

In a world where we're constantly told to "make memories" by documenting them, it's refreshing (and a little sobering) to be reminded that not taking the picture might actually let the memory live more vividly

FWIW Immersive Videos on Vision Pro are breathtaking. Even simple scenes from around the house, everyday events, become mesmerizing, they're SO real.... it's a whole different feeling/experience from videos.

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.

Very pretentious article. And some of these comments are highly self absorbed to be honest.

Have fun “remembering” your vacation and various moments of your life, I’ll be looking over my photos and videos when I’m 80.

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.

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.

I will literally forget if I didn’t have the pictures to remind me.

There’s nothing like finding an old picture and feeling the wave of nostalgia, slight disbelief, and warm memories.

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.

This is a heavily gendered phenomenon even though few will talk about it. Women take easily 10x the number of photos as men with their phones (likely underestimating this ratio).

This is a frequent issue today in romance, dating, etc. Men have trash photos and are structurally bad at taking them. Women judge everything today based on pictures. "Camera eats first" is my motto now when I go out with my wife or any other group with significant amounts of women.

I travel a lot and going back through days in Google Maps timeline is fun and nostalgic without the photos.

having a photo of some event can bring memories to me, and to an extent my memory would never allow me - same reason why I keep diaries. just to remember, that it once was. I don't need exact details, just a reminder.

I have aphantasia and photos help me cultivate my autobiographical memory.

Drawing has to come back. Drawing is severely underrated right now IMO

Counterpoint: I enjoy photography, which in some instances actually increases my joy of the moment. Additionally, my family members enjoy looking back at those moments too, as they are often too busy or too young to note what was happening in that moment.

I have built a timeline thing that combines my photos, my sketches, my journal, my GPS location and my Google searches. I can scroll to a given day and relive details that I would have otherwise forgotten about.

I am currently visiting Morocco again, this time without my motorcycle buddy. He died last summer. I would kick myself for not having any record of our trip together. There are so many little details in those pages I wrote in his company.

I also take new photos. They're for myself but also for my family and friends who are curious about my journey. They're a way to involve loved ones, because solo travel can get lonely.

As with anything else, there is a balance. Live in the moment, but save a little bit of it for later. Old photos can be nice to have when you feel a little down.

Besides, it trains you to observe certain details. What is worth sketching or writing about? What is the essence of this moment that must be captured? What will I want to remember about this day? How do I feel right now?

I have never regretted taking a picture or video.

Instead, bring an analogue camera.

meh, i can't remember shit about my kid's births except for a couple of blurred memories, what with the lack of sleep and stress

this dude probably has better memories of his than i do.

take photos, make sure to take them and write what was happening but i guess don't make them the point of the experience like this dude is

I wouldn't even call myself an amateur photographer, I've never really had the obsessive "Move out of the way!" or "Hold that thread of conversation, let me take this shot" thoughts that the article describes. I don't take my photos that seriously. Still, I've gotten more into it as a light hobby in the last few years. The thing that really changed my perspective was using a friend's fancy Canon camera and nice lenses. (I later got my own somewhat fancy camera but apart from a small 50mm I still bum off his nice lenses.) What I noticed is that I sometimes can cultivate memories more if I have a goal to take some photos at some place in addition to just walking around. And of course going through them much later lets me remember and reminisce a lot more than otherwise. With nicer lenses taking photos kind of does have to be a goal, too, I largely agree with the article about not doing two things at once. Only with my little 50mm can I manage to stuff the camera into a hoodie pocket for opportunistic snaps, otherwise it's a whole backpack and shoulder strap affair. Especially with the nice high zoom lenses, but with those it's quite nice how in many instances I can see details well beyond what I can make out with my own eyes. Or with fast action, I'll capture things in a spray-and-pray burst that are fun to look back on and I didn't notice happen in front of me. (And not just because of focusing more on the photo taking than the scene -- have someone else take photos next to you instead and compare. I find the same phenomenon, moments that passed by too quickly for me to really register and remember on my own, but the camera caught them.)

The skill aspect of photography is also kind of fun, like if you have time or repetition to fiddle with shutter speed and aperture/depth of field and lighting compensation and so on, trying to get something you like yourself despite a challenging environment adds a bit of spice. (Idol concerts in Japan are a pretty fun challenge.) And honestly some places or moments aren't the most exciting on their own, without a camera I'd pass through more quickly, but with a camera I might slow down and take my time more. Like a little nature park with colorful trees is nice and relaxing on its own even if not particularly exciting, but if I decide to bring a camera along, I'm probably going to spend more time there and in the end enjoy things a little bit more. Then there are places like museums or zoos or aquariums, which are also all fine on their own and I've probably gone through more without taking photos than with. But if an animal is just chilling there, without a camera I might just look at it for a bit and move on, but with a camera I might instead spend more time. More time also ups the odds for something surprising to happen.

When it comes to cellphone camera shots, I continue to rarely take them. My first phone wasn't even until 2013, when I was ~halfway done with college.

TL;DR: I can't distinguish between a good and a bad moment to pull out the camera, so it must be the camera's fault (?).

The camera is just a tool, and it behaves how you want it to.

If you're actively trying to get a good photo, you're obviously busy doing that. But if you're in the middle of a beautiful moment and pull it out just to capture a memory, it won’t distract you as much.

Honestly, this piece makes much more sense if you think it's bait—as if it were written by the friend of the author who got interrupted mid-conversation by him. It reads like a reminder for him to "touch grass," bluntly claiming that his obsession with taking pictures caused his divorce.