as a professional photographer i’ve come to value lived experiences so much more since starting doing photography. on vacations i’ll take a couple of photos of a pretty place or a person (with their consent of course) and then turn off my camera and let myself be in the moment
it saddens me to see people with their phones taking photos of every nook and crany that they’ll probably look at once or twice after, and leave without even having seen the beauty around them with their own eyes
This is also something I (luckily, I like to think) realized many years ago on my first trip abroad by myself (well, I went and met with a cousin of mine who is the same age as me) when I was 19 - when you’re focused on collecting pictures of everything (as he did to a level I jokingly refere to as “photographic diarrhea”), you’re not just living the moment.
Mind you, looking at any of the handful of pictures I made back then does bring me back to the memory of the whole thing (though the wierd details such as how the top floor of the WTC back then - pre 9/11 - was basically a large food court of fast food brands aren’t in the photos), but then again me thinking about it right now does the same.
as a professional photographer i’ve come to value lived experiences so much more since starting doing photography. on vacations i’ll take a couple of photos of a pretty place or a person (with their consent of course) and then turn off my camera and let myself be in the moment
it saddens me to see people with their phones taking photos of every nook and crany that they’ll probably look at once or twice after, and leave without even having seen the beauty around them with their own eyes
This is also something I (luckily, I like to think) realized many years ago on my first trip abroad by myself (well, I went and met with a cousin of mine who is the same age as me) when I was 19 - when you’re focused on collecting pictures of everything (as he did to a level I jokingly refere to as “photographic diarrhea”), you’re not just living the moment.
Mind you, looking at any of the handful of pictures I made back then does bring me back to the memory of the whole thing (though the wierd details such as how the top floor of the WTC back then - pre 9/11 - was basically a large food court of fast food brands aren’t in the photos), but then again me thinking about it right now does the same.