When I was young and easily swayed, I took life advice from a well-known Dutch comedian (Youp van 't Hek) who loved to mock tourists taking those cringe “holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa” photos. The message was clear: tourist photos were tacky, and besides, you could always find a better photo in the gift shop anyway.
So for years, I smugly avoided taking photos—too cool for clichés. It only hit me much later that I wasn’t missing out on better shots of monuments… I was missing pictures of the people I was with. Family and friends looking younger, sometimes happier, and—how shall I put it—sometimes still alive.
I have a friend who refuses to take pictures without people in them. It seemed dumb at first but after several years of pictures piling up I can see he had a pretty good point.
This is old advice, I remember it being framed as "if I wanted a picture of a monument I'd buy a postcard", and postcards basically no longer exist.
It made some sense to take pictures of panoramas or art when you could show something to people that could not see it otherwise, but in this era it makes no sense (unless you enjoy photography as a hobby).
A goofy picture of you kissing some old bronze statue? Dumb, but yours.
Turns out that the things I wish I'd taken photos of were: bookshelves (with titles visible), crappy old computers and things on the screen, posters I used to have on the wall, my everyday clothes, streets with parked cars, the inside of an art supply store.
These are not achievements, or unusual places, or humans. The things I'd like to see are stores of subtle cultural information than gets lost because it seems unimportant, and then a couple of decades later I want to look at all the details of it again but I can't. What was that car I used to be slightly interested by every time I walked past it? What range of items used to be for sale? What books did I have? What was actually on that poster that got torn and thrown out and now it's impossible to find another? Instead of answers, I have holiday snaps and pictures of humans.
This is funny because I found myself wishing the exact same thing not too long ago. My family took a few pictures of ancient computers with things on the screen; I wish we'd had a lot more. Some of that stuff from back then is completely lost to the sands of time.
I love that kind of thing too. I lean towards capturing that partly through photos but also through saving occasional pieces of paper or other physical artifacts. Like when I travel, I'll save receipts, restaurant menus, little brochures from museums, etc. At home, although I can't save everything (my apartment is already cluttered enough!), I'll hang onto occasional things like concert programs, election mailers, etc., just because I find they do a pretty good job of encapsulating something about the time they were in. It saddens me in a way that many of those things are being phased in favor of digital alternatives, because the physical objects have a certain intrinsic coherence that files lack.
We started watching ER since HBO got it last month. My favorite thing about it is the time-capsule of 1994 that it is. The clothes. The software (likely a terminal to a mainframe!). The stacks on stacks of physical documents (no EMR!).
Photographs of shelves of VHS tapes, books, and TTRPGs from childhood, and the homes of relatives are what I value above a lot of other photos. I had one of the earliest digital cameras, but the photos survived many data losses, and finally being of an age to appreciate a favourite book of a long-deceased relative is unspeakably special.
I took the girls all around the US, around the world even as they were growing up. I had grown up in a “camera family” so always had one on trips as a parent too.
Now, with two decades behind me, the photos of my young daughters, wife are the vacation photos I return to.
Oldest daughter is wearing a kimono sipping tea at some place in the mountains of Japan… Two youngest are chasing each other on the beach of some island in Hawaii…
You mean in the sense that no one sends/receives them? Because that might be true for the younger generation, but postcards are still available literally anywhere I've been in the world, and are still very easy to send, for those who enjoy that.
I just came back from two weeks touring Thailand. No postcards to be found anywhere. None. Lots of Buddha and elephant souvenirs though... Not sure what to make of that, but I guess they just weren't selling anymore?
In the last 5 or so trips (Europe and Africa), I was able to both find and send postcards from all of the countries. So they are definitely out there, and it is a nice way to put a smile on someone's face, especially since they are so rarely sent and received.
just got back from there - same. They had various novelty postcards, e.g. build a bridge or elephant out of them - but no picture postcards from the region.
The worse-looking (grotty, run-down, probably mostly sells cigarettes) type of souvenir shop has the best chance of selling postcards, in my experience. The photographs might have been taken in 1995.
I've been to some countries where only the official post office was allowed to sell stamps. That makes things much more inconvenient than the shop selling postcards also selling the stamps.
replaced with "if I wanted a pic of a monument I'd look it up on the net" (or even I'd generate it myself). Same; Instead of getting someone in front of a nice scenery (or even getting the scenery by itself), I consider putting a nice background to the photos of people I love.
This is really important point. Photos without people can be art.
But photos with people capture memories. As a photographer I had to learn this with time and blurry, bad angled picture with favourite people capturing precious moment is zilions times more valuable (at least to me) than perfect picture of some architecture I took.
About 15 years ago, I was traveling and taking some photos with my gf at the time. I remember this photographer with a very professional camera, like one of those you see on the sports field. He made some comment towards us, trying to joke.. Why do people take photos of themselves, you know what they look like.
For a moment I thought...he's right, I see myself and my girlfriend all the time.
Then I realized...objects, never change, why do you take it. What makes your photo unique? He was by himself, taking photos. He has no one to capture his moment.
Although I don't disagree with him - I do have some nice landscape and photos, of just trees, mountains, and of course tourist buildings. But in modern times...I will always take a photo with, and without people.
Sometimes I look back and I am in the mood to just look at places I've visited, sometimes, I want to look a who I visited with.
I hope that man found someone he enjoys taking photos with/of.
I would frame it differently, since I keep seeing a lot of very old photos of ie glaciers in Chamonix, France area that are very different now and much receded and thinned.
Don't photo (much) things that won't change. Things that change - people, but also landscape to certain level, cars, technology, even some buildings, sure its amazing to look back for you, or anybody else after decades and see the change. Obviously people change the most.
Basic photography advice is to have something alive in each photo. Not 100% but a good rule of thumb.
That's very interesting. I don't do the same thing for religious reasons. So the photos I do have are utilitarian, e.g., pictures I took of some plants for the purpose of later IDing them. Such things are quite fascinating to look back at 8 years later.
We also don't have any wedding photos, newborn photos, family photos, etc and there is a certain special feeling to knowing what someone looked like when they were younger lives only in our memories. Particularly in a world where we are flooded with pictures all the time.
The AI era makes this even more interesting. A custom in our circles is to try to find a photo for your profile pic on WhatsApp that maybe sort of looks like you, since it can't be a photo actually of you. So now AI-generated photos are quite popular for this purpose. I think it is an interesting art form.
Likewise, new baby announcements don't have a photo of the baby... you will get either an artistic impression or something, or else something AI generated, often of another type of animal. My second son was represented by a koala bear, my first daughter by abstract watercolours. I enjoy not knowing what a friend's baby looks like until I meet them for the first time.
I also find some of my friends and family, well, I don't regularly see pictures of them, and I tend to remember them however I first saw them. They age, but my memory of them lives on.
I understand this feeling. When I was younger I took a lot of time preparing and taking meaningless random pictures.
Years later I started taking pictures only with the people I was with.
Nowadays that smartphones got much better, I just start recording a video of the moments I think will be worth remembering, but without paying much attention to the frame, I just record and that’s it.
Years later when you watch them it feels much more vivid than watching a still dead photo.
While I certainly enjoy pictures of my friends and loved ones, I also deeply enjoy a few of the landscape photos I’ve taken. For me, I have a really really difficult time remembering a place or memory or situation unless I can recall the physical space I was in. A picture of a pretty vista and a few photos of the nearby surround area immediately helps me recall my feelings, who I was with, and the overall memory of the place, usually to great enjoyment
It was never about scarcity, it was about setting up future-you to find those pictures (digitally or otherwise) and be reminded of the people you were with when you took them.
Being too cool for school really steals a lot of joy from the people who subscribe to that idea. I was a tourist at Pisa not long ago and we really unironically enjoyed "leaning" into our roles as tourists, and now we have fun pictures.
On a backpacking trip, a guy and I were hiking together for a moment. I was snapping photos of the landscape and he started to chastise me for it. He made the same point. It’s about the people you’re with. Eventually, all the photos blur together.
He’s not wrong. I’ve got tons of pictures of the outdoors. Not that they aren’t beautiful. Pressed, I mostly couldn’t tell one from the other.
He's not wrong...unless you're planning to use that landscape photo in a way that will give you some sort of benefit in the future (emotional, financial, etc.).
It's easy (an often correct) to assume that most such photos will never be seen again, or maybe scrolled by quickly at best, but the fact is one doesn't know the motivation of the photographer, nor how they might change their motivation in the future to actually make use of that photo.
One of my main reason for using Strava* is for keeping context with my travel photos.
Even if it's just walks around a city center, I have a thing for photographing street art, and uploading the different photos to my walks and it places them at their locations on the recorded path/map of the walk (or hike) to be revisited/replayed when feeling nostalgic.
It also helps to be more discerning about what photos to keep (do I really need another wide landscape shot?) But once the "worthy" photos of my walk/hike are added, I remove the others from my phone and make the recorded activity private for me to enjoy. The context + notes with the photos in one place makes it all mean so much more when I revisit them. I completely ignore all social bits of the app, but this might appeal to some since you can share/fork an activity to the accounts of people that where with you.
*I don't work for them, but been using it over a decade now
Tangentially related: on each trip I make, I try my best to get a run in on Strava during which I explore a city or area with one or two pictures I make _during_ the run.
They're my favorite memories. NY's Central Park, London's Hyde Park, Norway's fjords, Barcelona's beaches... The best part is that these feel like very tangible memories and take zero physical space to store!
I kind of do agree about photos of landscapes. There's nothing that really ties me to those photos. Tend to stick to photographing people and particularly interesting things rather than just a good view of some hills.
We're getting closer to effortless vlogging with automatic follow-me drones, so you don't need to choose between shooting and actually experiencing things as much as you used to.
Completely disagree; photographs are just another kind of symbol, whether they be with others or not. I rarely travel with other people, and I despise having my own picture taken. All my photographs are of landscapes or objects; they're not terribly pretty but they do have meaning to me.
There one of of a non descript mountain turn with a small gravel pullout. There's a million prettier pictures but that one means the most meaning to me.
I almost died there; crashed on my motorcycle. Took the turn just a little too fast, panicked and just went over the edge trying desperately to stop. I don't remember much of the crash itself; just green, brown, and blue. Just that when I finally managed to get myself together, my leg crushed under the bike on on dirt that felt like concrete. No chance of pushing the bike off. No chance of digging or wriggling free. No chance of being seen from the road. My only hope was 911.
Except... I couldn't bring myself to call. There was nothing technically stopping me; good signal strength, modern phone with enhanced positional reporting. Just one little button press and help would be on the way. But why?
Why should I call for help?
Why did I want to keep living?
Why do I deserve to live?
Damned questions that I had been asking myself nearly every day for almost 26 years of my life by then. And here, finally at that mountain road I couldn't run from it any more. But it was also the first real chance I had to put myself to the test; to know myself one way or the other. So I turned my phone off. And left my mortality to the hands of fate.
For 7 hours I just lay there, nothing else to do but watch sun and cloud drift in the sky with waiting for an end. And yet there was a stillness there that I had never experienced before in my life. No more voices demanding that I meet their expectations. No more fear. No more uncertainty. Just a blessed silence with a light at the end of the road that I had no seen in a long time.
It seemed almost cruel when motorist looking to relieve himself found me. Part of my wished he hadn't but there was not much else that could be done then. Him and his buddy played the rescuers, and I played the victim; freed me from my entrapment, got my bike on the road, kindly offered to call for help or stay with me, and I declined as graciously as I could and limped both myself and bike home.
But after so long, I had an answer.
I don't want to live.
I don't deserve to live.
My life has no meaning.
But it also means that I don't have to care anymore either. Not about trying to maximize my career. No more forcing myself to fake smiles to make friends I can't find any connection with. No worry about finding a partner. Not about measuring myself or trying to improve or anything.
That photograph on my phone is meaningless to everyone else.
To me, it was where I finally found peace. And nothing can ever replace that.
I've started more traveling the world the past two years. The pictures I review when I get back didn't seem as interesting as those with my wife in the scene. Even a crowded street scene with multicolored houses was just OK except the one with my wife looking at a fruit stand.
From now on, I will include my travel companions whenever I can.
I missed out so much. When I was a college student, I rejected photos, as digital cameras where everywhere, and I was a snob, in my high school times taking analog camera photo. I read a lot of books about Zen, living in the moment, but now I regret this. The view photos I have I cherish as very dear memories.
When modern smartphones first came out, I rejected them as a snob too. I continued to believe a dumb phone plus a dedicated camera was a better choice. But of course I often forget to bring the better camera out and I missed out on so much too. There's a reason people say the best camera is the camera you have with you.
I generally have disdain for picture taking on vacations, but leaning on the tower is definitely one I would make an exception for. Sure it's tacky and unoriginal, but that's what makes it mandatory!
So for years, I smugly avoided taking photos—too cool for clichés. It only hit me much later that I wasn’t missing out on better shots of monuments… I was missing pictures of the people I was with. Family and friends looking younger, sometimes happier, and—how shall I put it—sometimes still alive.