Published on 12, July, 2020
I notice that so many people photograph everything and catalogue thier lives and curate them via this medium. I don't take photographs even when I have a camera and I've not had one for over a decade and really dislike photo's of myself. Other people find my lack of photos strange, my lack of curation and cataloguing strange, whre as I find their need to do this strange. One of ther reasons I don't take photo's is I find it stops me being in the moment, it's an interuption to an experience I'll never have fully again, I'll have a visual reminder of an experience not fully experienced and lived. To me it seems to be living vicariously through images whilst being unmindful of the time and place and the feeling evoked.
I also wondered how people would cope if we had a big tech outage and photographing everything was no longer an option because we'd have to go back to 35ml film camera's and either have our own dark rooms to process them or send them off to be comercially processed?
Our bog was windowless, so I put the enlarger on the actual toilet lid, and had a big board over the bath with my trays of chemicals in it, used the bath itself for final rinse and there was already a line for drying washing, so that held my BLACK and WHITE prints.
I found that photography gave me "a thing to do" at weddings, parties etc. Whilst everyone one else was enjoying that part of "living in the moment".
I'm glad of digital as it means my photos take up far less space. I rarely look at them, nor does anyone else, but occasionaly I have cause to, and they bring back memories sometimes adn allow to to retrun or recoil from that moment. But mainly it stops me being bored or worse when I have to be somewhere where there are too many people or events for me to process.
The actual images I capture are indeed mostly "wasted effort" but taking them makes me look at my surroundings and take keener observations in a way and to an extent that would make me a marked man if I didn't have a camera in my hand...
PLUS, when some twit drives into the back of me, (Or I drive into the back of some twit) I can immediately obtain visual evidence of the scene and damages etc. And that is REALLY useful.
I get why you volunteer to be the photographer, people dont' see "you" they see the camera instead, I think this sort of thing is very good for autists at a social event.
I refused to have photo's when I got married I hat them so much, now we're divorced I'm glad I have none.
I don't mind some landscape photo's I much prefer them to ones with people in.
My Dad had an old Russian bit of photography processing kit that came in a small metal case, we laughingly refered to it as his spy kit.