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Weird take. Instead of wasting time not being present in the moment, you can free yourself from the burden of "capturing the moment" in a picture that millions

Weird take. Instead of wasting time not being present in the moment, you can free yourself from the burden of "capturing the moment" in a picture that millions of other untold people have and will equally capture. And instead you can actually live your life. In the moment. With full presence.

etrautmann 3y ago
Weird take. As a hobby photographer who takes 15k / year, the act of photography IS what I like about seeing a moment or living life with full presence. Certainly not true for everyone
- prawn 3y ago
  I'd agree with that. People get different things from different actions. Like you, documenting a place or an experience gives me purpose and challenge. I can be happy just experiencing a place, or trying to capture it in a particular way.
  - namaria 3y ago
    Enjoying the process is much more rewarding then enjoying the products of any given action.
WeylandYutani 3y ago
I agree. There are people out there with 50k pictures on their phone. How often do you think they look at them? Data hoarders. Make memories with your brain. If you don't remember an event it was probably not all that good anyway.
- haswell 3y ago
  > Make memories with your brain. If you don't remember an event it was probably not all that good anyway. I have to strongly disagree with this. Memories fade with time/age, and for those of us without a visual memory, photos can mean the difference between staying connected to certain memories and mostly losing them. I easily have 50K photos, and I love that I can refresh my memory of a time and place easily. It’s in a similar category as journaling in my view. Modern photo libraries make this even more practical with map overlays and AI classification for east keyword searches. People build “second brains” for a reason.
  - prawn 3y ago
    I'd strongly agree also. I get a lot personally out of remembering events where those memories have been evoked by seeing an old photo. It might be something from 40 years ago, or four years ago, and definitely includes fantastic events that shrink in remembering any sort of busy life. Even just last night, we were looking through old photos at my parents' house. My dad had found a photo of repairing a lintel and brickwork with his father (then a retired builder). It was definitely a positive discovery, but he'd said that he'd forgotten the photo existed. The photo had other clues as well, like small construction projects in the background, timing of the year in the garden, etc.
  - pluijzer 3y ago
    What I like to do is to make pictures of mundane parts of my life, my desk while working, the living room while watching tv when it is a mess. Things like that. Later in live these pictures are the most valuable to me. They are full of little nostalgic memories. I also like taking pictures of nature, forests, insects etc. but I actually never look at them again.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      yeah, these are the kind of pictures i most often wish i had made. how did my room in that house look like back then when i lived over there? most of my pictures seem to be of people, friends, family. others mainly are made with the intention of sharing.
- em-bee 3y ago
  it's not about data hoarding, it's just that among those photos are some important ones and the work to sort and throw out the unimportant ones is just to much. i have backups of social media apps with all photos they ever loaded (because there is no other way to export photos from the app in bulk). that means it is 95% junk. but sorting through that junk is just to much effort. but i am not going to delete it because of those 5%. maybe if i haven't had the need to search for something for more than a decade then i can delete them (but managing old backups is an effort in itself). or i'll find an AI tool that can help me categorize the pictures.

etrautmann 3y ago

Weird take. As a hobby photographer who takes 15k / year, the act of photography IS what I like about seeing a moment or living life with full presence. Certainly not true for everyone

prawn 3y ago
I'd agree with that. People get different things from different actions. Like you, documenting a place or an experience gives me purpose and challenge. I can be happy just experiencing a place, or trying to capture it in a particular way.
- namaria 3y ago
  Enjoying the process is much more rewarding then enjoying the products of any given action.

WeylandYutani 3y ago

I agree. There are people out there with 50k pictures on their phone. How often do you think they look at them? Data hoarders. Make memories with your brain. If you don't remember an event it was probably not all that good anyway.

haswell 3y ago
> Make memories with your brain. If you don't remember an event it was probably not all that good anyway. I have to strongly disagree with this. Memories fade with time/age, and for those of us without a visual memory, photos can mean the difference between staying connected to certain memories and mostly losing them. I easily have 50K photos, and I love that I can refresh my memory of a time and place easily. It’s in a similar category as journaling in my view. Modern photo libraries make this even more practical with map overlays and AI classification for east keyword searches. People build “second brains” for a reason.
- prawn 3y ago
  I'd strongly agree also. I get a lot personally out of remembering events where those memories have been evoked by seeing an old photo. It might be something from 40 years ago, or four years ago, and definitely includes fantastic events that shrink in remembering any sort of busy life. Even just last night, we were looking through old photos at my parents' house. My dad had found a photo of repairing a lintel and brickwork with his father (then a retired builder). It was definitely a positive discovery, but he'd said that he'd forgotten the photo existed. The photo had other clues as well, like small construction projects in the background, timing of the year in the garden, etc.
- pluijzer 3y ago
  What I like to do is to make pictures of mundane parts of my life, my desk while working, the living room while watching tv when it is a mess. Things like that. Later in live these pictures are the most valuable to me. They are full of little nostalgic memories. I also like taking pictures of nature, forests, insects etc. but I actually never look at them again.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    yeah, these are the kind of pictures i most often wish i had made. how did my room in that house look like back then when i lived over there? most of my pictures seem to be of people, friends, family. others mainly are made with the intention of sharing.
em-bee 3y ago
it's not about data hoarding, it's just that among those photos are some important ones and the work to sort and throw out the unimportant ones is just to much. i have backups of social media apps with all photos they ever loaded (because there is no other way to export photos from the app in bulk). that means it is 95% junk. but sorting through that junk is just to much effort. but i am not going to delete it because of those 5%. maybe if i haven't had the need to search for something for more than a decade then i can delete them (but managing old backups is an effort in itself). or i'll find an AI tool that can help me categorize the pictures.