I fell in love with the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty last year when it came out, so I recently bought it...and then watched it twice in a 24 hour period. Seriously, so good! But there was one part that stood out to me, a part that I wanted to talk about today.
The quote comes near the end of the movie from a photographer. He has a perfect shot of an AMAZING sight! and yet he hesitates to take the picture. He says "Sometimes I don't [take the shot]. If I like a moment for me, personally, I don't like having the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it. Right here."
When I very first made this blog, 4 years ago (it was really that long ago??) I called it Snapshots of a Wordy Person because, well, I know I can get a little wordy in the details. But I also wanted to include as many pictures with my posts as possible. A picture says a thousand words after all, and what better way to paint the picture of my experiences than with pictures along with the story. I was really good at taking pictures and uploading them to my blog in Italy, and I resolved to continue taking pictures after I returned. Then life got in the way and I forgot to bring my camera with me, or forgot to take it out and take amazing (or even horrible) pictures to help articulate my experiences. So I felt bad posting stories on my blog without pictures. Who wants to read paragraph after paragraph of my life, even if it does have a lot of detail.
Then I went to China, where I needed a VPN to even get onto my blog. Nevertheless I tried to post stories and pictures of my various adventures. But I don't know if the stories always came out with the pictures in the format that I wanted. But I was taking a lot of pictures. And forgetting to take a lot of pictures as well... I think I was starting to get a better balance of picture taking to experiencing life though. I took more pictures of people than landscapes and things. Those are the memories that I want to keep anyways. With Google so prominent, I could find a thousand landscape pictures of the same thing in much higher quality or from much better angles, so why did I need to take pictures I could find elsewhere? I began to realize what might actually be important to document and what I might not care about in 2 hours, let alone 20 years.
But sometimes I catch myself still taking ridiculous pictures of things. Mostly I try to do it on snapchat any more, so it only really exists in my life for 24 hours. But even that is a little ridiculous. I am part of a generation that is so afraid to do anything without sharing it with the world; I think we as a generation want praise and compliments on our ever action so we think we need to record it all. We take pictures of food, pictures of our feet on the beach, pictures of our clothes and our crafts, pictures of everything. I watched a funny video that addresses that issue. But I want to ask: What do we really want to share and remember about our experiences?
So from now on I will strive to make more memories and enjoy the moments as they come, and not feel pressured to immediately take pictures and share them with any and everyone that I can. This doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't take pictures, but I won't let the little screen in front of me be the only way I see and remember the world around me. I will stay in the moment.
The quote comes near the end of the movie from a photographer. He has a perfect shot of an AMAZING sight! and yet he hesitates to take the picture. He says "Sometimes I don't [take the shot]. If I like a moment for me, personally, I don't like having the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it. Right here."
When I very first made this blog, 4 years ago (it was really that long ago??) I called it Snapshots of a Wordy Person because, well, I know I can get a little wordy in the details. But I also wanted to include as many pictures with my posts as possible. A picture says a thousand words after all, and what better way to paint the picture of my experiences than with pictures along with the story. I was really good at taking pictures and uploading them to my blog in Italy, and I resolved to continue taking pictures after I returned. Then life got in the way and I forgot to bring my camera with me, or forgot to take it out and take amazing (or even horrible) pictures to help articulate my experiences. So I felt bad posting stories on my blog without pictures. Who wants to read paragraph after paragraph of my life, even if it does have a lot of detail.
Then I went to China, where I needed a VPN to even get onto my blog. Nevertheless I tried to post stories and pictures of my various adventures. But I don't know if the stories always came out with the pictures in the format that I wanted. But I was taking a lot of pictures. And forgetting to take a lot of pictures as well... I think I was starting to get a better balance of picture taking to experiencing life though. I took more pictures of people than landscapes and things. Those are the memories that I want to keep anyways. With Google so prominent, I could find a thousand landscape pictures of the same thing in much higher quality or from much better angles, so why did I need to take pictures I could find elsewhere? I began to realize what might actually be important to document and what I might not care about in 2 hours, let alone 20 years.
But sometimes I catch myself still taking ridiculous pictures of things. Mostly I try to do it on snapchat any more, so it only really exists in my life for 24 hours. But even that is a little ridiculous. I am part of a generation that is so afraid to do anything without sharing it with the world; I think we as a generation want praise and compliments on our ever action so we think we need to record it all. We take pictures of food, pictures of our feet on the beach, pictures of our clothes and our crafts, pictures of everything. I watched a funny video that addresses that issue. But I want to ask: What do we really want to share and remember about our experiences?
So from now on I will strive to make more memories and enjoy the moments as they come, and not feel pressured to immediately take pictures and share them with any and everyone that I can. This doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't take pictures, but I won't let the little screen in front of me be the only way I see and remember the world around me. I will stay in the moment.
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