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Comment by submeta | Hacker News Reader

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?

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Right, each to his own. And you don't have to be old to not notice important items in a scene. Also I'd venture very few people would be able to recall much of the detail in any scene after even a few years. Perhaps those few with photographic memories could but the vast majority would not.

I take photos often and I've many going back quite a few decades, and many of them I cannot remember taking let alone remember the fine details.

Even when I inspect a photograph to see whether it's worth scanning I'll still miss certain details. I've noticed repeatedly that I only become aware of them when inspecting the scanned photo in Photoshop or such to remove spots, scratches, etc. It's only after close inspection that may take quite some time that I become aware of these features.

For me, photos are an essential reminder of things past. That said, I've noticed some people really aren't that interested in photos, and what's more I've often encountered them. On many an ocassion after I've dug out old photos and slides for scanning I've offered copies to people who were in say original group shots and they've not been very interested. On the other hand, others are very eager for copies and can't wait to receive them.

Atop of that for some of us memories are less vivid to begin with. My visualizations are rather faint but looking at an old photo brings out the fabric of the moment around it, sometimes down to the smell and sounds.

I've noticed that of all the hundreds of thousands of family images I have taken, everyone wants to watch the tens of thousands of videos I took simultaneously.

With video, you can recollect better people's personalities, get more of a sense of the moment. Pictures are great, though imho videos surpass.

I agree! Videos are different.

A problem I have, and I'd guess a lot of people now have, is organization. We have the ability to easily capture content, and even easier now organize it via albums. But you have to build your own "system" of organization. And now we use our camera for mundane things, like screenshots, reminders, documentation, etc. so the amount of new data is just ever increasing.

My parents had a camcorder that was out for special occasions. The organization is automatically chronological, everything is a highlight because there are (relatively) way fewer videos, and if you sit down to watch them, you get a multi-month span, with multiple events on a single tape.

Apple/Google Photos attempt to recreate some of this by grouping & generating videos, but for me it doesn't have quite the same feeling, they are usually too specific like "Trip to NY" rather than "November/December 1997".

Can't basic sorting like chronological be handled by file metadata?

When you transfer your files to storage, you can use a simple script to rename the files with date taken and into a year -- month -- day folder structure.

Or dumping everything into one folder would work with metadata, though I've found different programs get confused with created date Vs modified date Vs other metadata used, so best to rename.

In the future this will likely be less of an issue with ai reading everything, easy organisation and searching and, I hope, an ai that can read 2 tb of videos and create a 20 min vacation edit or best of birthdays in the last 10 years etc

I enjoying the freeing Live Photos. Sometimes I wish they were just a little longer.

> “…memories fade, how they disappear…”

Photos have a double effect. Look at a photo, and your memory is stimulated. Recall something from your childhood (for example) and there is a good chance your memory is a recollection of the photo and not the sensation of experience.

It’s funny how older generations had fewer photos, in general. Photography was a commitment and not an afterthought.

How many times have I seen on Facebook someone’s picture of a dear relative—out of focus, poor composition, terrible color. And yet it’s cherished image.

I also like movies more than I like sports.

It's the internet... people always only talk about the extremes. Look at concerts for example, you have two extremes:

1) don't take photos/videos at all, enjoy the concert!

2) hold your phone above your head for the whole concert and record and instagram everything, every song, every word said between songs, everything.

Both options suck, and most discussons just use the extremes like those above.

There is always a middle ground, where you take a few photos, maybe a short video, and as you said, in a few years, you'll be scrolling down your gallery and suddenly remember that (looking at metadata) on june 7th 2019 you were at a concert of ThatRandomBand, and it'll be a nice memory to keep and remember. Noone will watch an hour of video with distorted audio, and you'll forget a bunch of stuff not saved anywhere, but a photo here and there is always a nice thing to have.

Pictures are one way, there are other ways too like writing a journal.

Camera after all is a recent invention.

I do practice journaling, both on paper and digitally, been doing this for over 30 years. But there's nothing that can replace a video that I took from my grandpa where he would talk about his life's journeys for an hour, shortly before he developed alzheimers.

Few people have the time to sit and write a journal each day. I tried and it became a burden, a dread before bed time. Sleep won out.

Journals can also be electively subjective. Yes, a photo can be framed or posed, but it's harder to edit awkward truths out of a photo rather than omitting them from a journal.

People used to be always ready to scrible down things in the past I think, perhaps in the same way people are eager to take pictures now. Ofcourse one can't know before hand what's worth noting down and what's not, so I guess they would have just scribbled down everything, like when Plato wrote down what Socrates said.

"Few people have the time to sit and write a journal each day."

Yet many people seem to have the time to sink in endless time on Netflix, FB, Insta, candycrush or doomscrolling somewhere else.

Have you also noticed that the quality of people's handwriting is inversely proportional to the amount of time spent on these platforms?

( I have no data and I made this up)

I keep a journal. I write in it when there's something on my mind. I don't force myself to write in it every day, or at all, that would be ludicrous. Sometimes I write in it all of the time. Deep thoughts about life get indiscriminately mixed in with movie reviews, shopping lists and the fact that the name of the guy who unblocked the drains was Nigel. I write more than I read. Sometimes I search it for practical information (what was his name again?) which is why I keep it digital.

So if I really want to, I can find out how I was generally feeling in, say, 2006, and what sort of questions were on my mind and what ideas I had. Usually the answers are: pretty much the same, and stupid ones, kind of like today but worse. So it turns out that I don't want to review my journal much. But I only know that I don't want to because I have the option, so it has a reassuring function, and writing helps me think in the first place.

When it comes to photos, though, I'm with Ray Davies:

People take pictures of the Summer

Just in case someone thought they had missed it

And to prove that it really existed

People take pictures of each other

Just to prove that they really existed

Don't show me no more, please

It is not about having the time but prioritizing this time over something else.

> Pictures are one way, there are other ways too like writing a journal.

Finding a shoebox full of photos is a lot easier to go through and reading through a journal / diary. One can quickly reminisce with the photos, but it would take a while to read through various written entries.

Photos can also capture spontaneous instants of time, whereas recollecting and writing down something involved taking up the entire context of an event and then 'interpreting' it so you can write it down.

Further, not all of one's internal state can even perhaps be put into words to be written down. A photo may help you recall feelings that you find difficult to put into words.

It's quite nice to scroll through photos (to search for something, or not) and bring back some memories that were left in there but a bit forgotten.

Yes, they are "bit" forgotten now. They will be more forgotten later, and they will be completely forgotten a while later. Keeping them away from being forgotten shouldn't be the goal. Just enjoy the moment and move on with new moments.

As I've grown older, my main regret is not having spent time with people i wanted to. Photographs have never come up. Perhaps it's because I've always disliked it and looked down on people who killed moments by trying to immortalize them.

The photos at best act as a trigger to remember but in a very limited way.

And being a photographer i think really does alter your way of looking at things imo for the worse.

> And being a photographer i think really does alter your way of looking at things imo for the worse.

Curious why you believe this?

Personally, my experience of the world expanded significantly when I bought a camera in my early 30s.

It forced me to notice things I’d never noticed before. It trained me to open my awareness. It helped me see more beauty, experience more awe, and become more attuned to the environments I’m in.

I also have aphantasia - my mind’s eye is blind - and photography helps me remember things in a way I otherwise cannot.

Anything can be taken to the extreme and become a problem. But I couldn’t disagree more for the general case. Most of the photographers I’ve met since I started doing this have been wonderful people with perspectives that helped me broaden my own.

I’ve also met people who can’t put the camera down and tend to annoy the people around them. But this is a small subset.

I guess I'm viewing this through my own personal experiences and world view. Everyone I've seen who's a compulsive photographer doesn't have this heightened awareness for details. Instead, they're, at best, people who know how to manipulate a "scene" to get a better photo.

The thing is that every thing in the real world is a photo subject for them rather than an experience. And i think the deeper down the hole they go, the less they realise this.

I had not factored in conditions like aphantasia into my thoughts and in that context, i can agree that it would be useful but i imagine that it's not a very common condition so it's an outlier?

For many people I've met, the first time they see something, it's through their phone/camera because they don't want to "miss the moment". I'd rather let it linger in my head as a memory and age.

I can't take disagree with your point of view but i think it's mostly because our experiences are so different.

I know it's silly, but I even keep tickets or receipts from places I visit. They don't take up much space and every few years I organize things and I'm reminded not just of the trips I took but the things I did, things I ate, etc. I take pictures as well, but I just love hoarding this stuff.

You still only need one photo per hundreds of days for that, though.

Yes, I completely disagree with this post for this very reason. Who cares if the photos are “generic”? Also this post doesn’t even include videos. To cheat yourself out of a 2D Time Machine just tells me that you’re still young. A better discussion would be what would be the ideal device for capturing memories that also allow you to live and participate in the moment?

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