You Probably Take Too Many Photos

If you wanted to remember a vacation 20 years ago, odds are that you have a couple of old Kodak point-and-shoot shots that could help jog your memory.

“Oh I’d forgotten how short I was!”

“Ah, right, we took that day trip to Disney World!”

“See, there’s the whole group! That’s your great Aunt Susan!”

You might not be able to remember everything you saw or did, but you might be able to recall a feeling or an essence to that trip.

There was always one person (if you were in my family it was my dad) who was the designated trip documenter, but today a visit to a major tourist destination can feel like a voyage through a sea of iPhones. Every member of every group is furiously clicking away and filling up their camera rolls with identical low resolution photos and vertical videos that are largely indistinguishable from those that one might find on the Google Maps review section for that particular attraction.

Now that I say it out loud, it sounds pretty silly.

So why do we do this?

The instinct to document our own lives is clear: we want to remember sights, activities, and time with loved ones that we might not get to enjoy for real ever again.

Before the days of digital cameras and smartphones, there was a financial ramification for wasting film on unimportant subjects. A natural system of prioritizing more meaningful memories over frivolous activities.

Admittedly, most people who lived through that era (I definitely didn’t!) will readily tell you that they wish they had more photos to remember their earlier lives, I don’t intend to needlessly romanticize the pre-digital era. But I think we can learn from this principle of exercising restraint when it comes to choosing when and where to take photos.

Today, most of us show no such restraint. The average person takes around 20 photos a day, and that doesn’t even include videos—let alone the daily dose of screenshots taken and memes downloaded. Despite what we intend at the time, it’s quite rare that we’ll actually spend much time going back and reviewing everything that we take. The volume is overwhelming. It’s the digital equivalent of a roll top desk jam-packed with unkempt documents that you’d rather shove shut and forget about.

OK, so maybe we’re a little disorganized, but at least we’re helping ourselves remember the things that we’ve done and the places we’ve been whenever we happen across them in our camera roll, right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately, the act of taking photos has actually been well documented to have an adverse effect on our ability to recall our own memory of the event itself. By shifting our attention from our surroundings to the task of capturing the surroundings on our camera, we are blocking out all of the other senses that compose a whole and complete memory. Sounds, smells, and, most importantly, our interactions with the people around us, all take a back seat.

In fairness, there is at least some evidence that the act of assessing our surroundings in order to decide what would make the best photo might help preserve our visual recollection. But one thing is for certain: aimlessly taking dozens of smartphone photos in the moment and assuming that we’ll go back and catch up later doesn’t work.

So it seems that we find ourselves in the worst of both worlds: spending all our time in the moment documenting, without ever actually returning to relive the memory that we sacrificed our attention to preserve.

What do we do about all this?

A few quick suggestions:

• Try leaving your phone or camera behind for a stop or two of a vacation.

• Take just a few purposeful photos at the beginning of an event, and then push yourself to enjoy and experience the moment.

• Go through your photos on a weekly/monthly basis and after a big outing or vacation. Delete all the ones that you’ll never need again (memes, screenshots, duplicates, photos showing your roommate where to look in your room for your hydroflask). Sort everything else into a cohesive album (March 2024, Florida Trip 2023, etc.).

Reviewing photos (especially when they’re still fresh in your mind) can help cement a longer-term memory. Deciding whether or not a photo is worth keeping is a good way of forcing yourself to process your emotions and establish a lasting impression of your experience. And sorting them into bite-sized albums greatly increases your chance of looking back through them in the future.

Photography is a wonderful art, and a gift that the digital age has made nearly ubiquitous. But it’s worth remembering that art should imitate life, not consume it.

Takeaway: For our photos to actually help us preserve memories in the digital age, we needs to limit the images that we take, and organize the ones we have.

My name is Brent and I like to talk about ideas and the way that we share them. Thank you so much for reading!

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