Does documenting life ever interfere with living life?
Guys, I have been meaning to ask you an important question – if two bloggers meet for lunch and don’t take a photo and blog about it, did it really happen?!?!*
Ha ha ha.
I’m teasing myself here – I usually meet a blogger once a week for lunch but haven’t been taking photos of these lunch dates, and it feels weird. But I tend to get a bit fixated on documenting memories. I’ve been continuing my beginning of the month digital photo frame exercise, and I probably look forward to it a bit more than I should. So I think restraining from taking photos of everything (especially selfies?) is probably good for me.
Meghan recently recapped her weekend and said about her Saturday, “It was one of those days that the conversation just flowed and we were chatting and having such a great time that the camera or phone didn’t make it out of my bag once to take a picture.”
I read that and thought, I need more days like that! I need to quit thinking so much about taking photos! And just live! Every interaction does NOT need to be documented**.
Are you more likely to take too many photos or too few?
It’s nice that Steven has the fancy schmany camera now – I barely thought about taking photos when we were in Iowa over the weekend – Steven took care of it!
*Or should the question be, if two bloggers meet for lunch, take a photo and DON’T share it on social media, did it really happen? Ha ha.
**You’re still stuck with my training recap pics though!
Themocracy
It is funny, I had lunch with Kelly once, and forgot to take a picture, and see Britt on Mondays for our walk/run group and I am scared to take a picture next to her. I would look like an elephant, she is so tiny.
I’m a photo whore. I take all the photos all the time but I do have an off switch. (I’m worse when L is away..) I send my Daad photo of the days and take about 1000 photos on my iPhone every 2.5-3 months. I take photos on my way to work, take photos while out running, I take all the photos. Funny thing is L and I rarely take photos together, we photo beer our food, the CB dog, but rarely each other… He is also a photo whore & takes loads of photos with his real fancy cameras 🙂 and to answer your question, yes. Pulling your phone out to photograph food at lunch definitely disrupts the eating, unless everyone is being dorky ‘gramming their foods* (instagram.. ‘Gramming = taking photos for instagram… Hehe) ok that’s disruptive too. Some people are too concerned with taking all the photos and getting the “perfect shot” that they miss living life. This article about weddings kinda sums it up- everyone is trying to photograph the couple, but basically miss out on the actual wedding & ruin the couples professional shots.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bridal-guide/why-you-might-want-to-con_b_3331528.html
In all my photographing glory I have balance. There’s a time and place for everything and usually taking a ton of photos is not too fun for the people around you who are interacting with each other…
*if it didnt happen on FB , then it didnt happen. Period. 🙂
GRAMMING!!! Barf! JK! 😉 You love shortening your words now, don’t you?! Heh heh heh.
Oh my gosh. That post! Ahh! That makes me so happy that smart phones were not as common during our wedding. Because it seems that more people think to use those to take pictures (even though they sometimes suck) than a real camera. And the flash point! OMG! Flash is SO awful! It ruins MOST pictures!!! I wonder what my wedding photog would say about all this. She can be sassy, in a fun way. Ha!
I should take more photos than I do but I get really lazy about it.
I definitely go out of my way to take photos on my runs so I have something to put on my blog. I feel like a post that’s all text about me running would be sooo boring to anyone who’s not me. I like having the photos to mix things up. But, once I’m done with my run, I feel like I hardly take any photos, unless my dogs are being particularly cute. I’m definitely unbalanced (in more ways than one).
A long time ago I put a poll on my blog asking people if they preferred pics with posts and it was a resounding yes! So I try to come up with something, even though it sometimes has NO relation… like a picture of Data! Ha ha!
P.S. We need more dog pics from you 😉
I’m actively trying to take more pictures lately…my daughter broke our actual camera when she was 2 and we never replaced it, but it meant we took a lot less pictures. I’ve been trying to fix that because I realized if something happened, we’d lose so many memories!
I think I have the opposite problem–I sit down to blog and realize I don’t have any photos to go along with the stories I want to write! I have really made a conscious effort to not take too many photos during fun activities w/ the kids. I’ll let myself take a few photos right away, but then I put the camera away and enjoy!
What? You were in Iowa this past weekend? I was in CF Friday through Sunday for my 40th Class Reunion. I didn’t see you. :-(. I saw your Grandma(Aunt Carolyn) and Sue after the parade on Saturday.
Wish I would have run into you guys too!
We were in Guttenberg! So you didn’t miss us! It would have been nice to meet up though! I hope you had a good time! 🙂
I think there’s a happy medium on photo taking, and definitely sharing. On the one hand, does anyone really need to see 100 pictures of your little darling eating a tomato or something on facebook (seriously, this showed up on my feed yesterday). But on the other, there are some moments that are worth capturing because they may never come again. I thought about this when I got home from California – I hardly have any pictures with Carrie, even though I’ve known her for 6 years. Of course, I was too busy having fun to take any, but I wish I had. In general though, I take a lot more pictures than I share, and to Xaarlin’s point, I try not to be too disruptive or annoying about it.
There definitely is a happy medium! I take a crapton of photos too and don’t share a lot of them. Unless I had something good, like Data eating a bird, then there would be 100+ shared directly on YOUR Facebook wall.
There are people I want to have more pics of me with, too! I just like seeing that pop up on my photo frame. Henry comes to mind…
I would obviously answer that with 100+ pictures of the dogs chasing a fly, since that’s the only wildlife they ever eat.
So Jude was lying when he told me he gets a “cat dinner” every Sunday night?
I think that means he steals cat food from our neighbor, but he may have been making the whole thing up.
You are so good at getting photos for your training log- I’m impressed! (And in the blogging world, if you don’t get a photo- it didn’t happen! HAHA jk!) Yeah I hope to get better at taking more photos to document things–I’d love to try to make some of those photo books from Shutterfly but have failed miserably. Maybe when I have a kid I’ll be better at it?! Who knows!
Valerie
http://www.the-style-files.com
I used to carry my camera around with me all the time to take pictures but I got sick of it! Now, I just have my iPhone most of the time (unless I’m on vacation or going somewhere that I know I’ll want to take pictures) and I figure if I want to take a picture bad enough I’ll take it with my iPhone but I don’t feel the same pressure that I do when I carry my camera around!
OMG, I used to take my camera with me WHEN I RAN! How lame is that?! Mostly smart phone for me now, too 🙂
Yeah, but then we got awesome timer action shots 🙂
True! And those are a lot of fun pics!
I totally take too few, but I just got a new phone with a better camera, so I’m hoping to change that. I think that I’m going to end up with tons of pictures of our dogs!
That IS what you should be taking pictures of!
I can’t believe you just posted this because I was thinking about this exact same thing! When I was a working mom, I was constantly photographing everything the kids and our family did. I think I felt like I had to show that I was a good mom and doing things with the family even though I wasn’t always there. Now that I stay home, I find that I don’t take as many pics. I don’t bring the fancy camera with me everywhere and was just wondering why the other day. I think it might be because I’m just living life with the kids. I don’t feel the need to constantly document it because I’m there watching it with my own eyes and a smile on my face. I’ll take a few ice of big events, but not the everyday stuff. I don’t know if its good or bad, but it seems to be a change for me. Hope I remember it all!
OUR MINDS ARE LINKED!!!!! 😉
That is such an interesting perspective. And it shows how happy you are now! 🙂 I never would have thought of that though, although it makes sense – taking more pics of the people you are with less frequently – I bet I do that with my fam in IA!
Ah good thoughts! I used to be really anal about getting pics…but they were solely for the blog, not for ME so I stopped. I don’t really take pictures of food at restaurants anymore because it makes max uncomfortable and I only try to take pictures when it’s something that actually interests me, not something that will look cool on the blog
I just met a blogger friend of mine for the first time. We spent two hours talking and laughing. When we got back home we realized we never even thought about taking pictures or tweeting or facebooking. I am not a big picture taker when I am out doing things. I just forget!
Aww! That is so awesome! I always try to take a pic at a first meet, even though it’s dorky. Remember ours in Chicago? Aww 🙂
This is why some of the most fun things I do don’t make the blog! I was lucky that my girlfriends took pictures on my Memorial Day trip- because I barely took any. Because I was enjoying myself!!! I will say, for Europe I plan on taking a ton of pictures but plan on bringing my REAL camera, not my phone so I’m not attached to social media the entire time.
There is a lot we do that I don’t blog! LOL. Although, not entirely because I don’t document it!
Will your phone even work overseas? That will be an awesome time to unplug!
I have seen it happen to bloggers. As in, we’ll meet up in a group and some people are so focused on getting the photos that they can’t be part of the conversation. Its kind of sad. Or if they have to bail on plans because a recipe isn’t created or a blog post isn’t done.
I’m not dedicated enough to let that happen — besides, blogging is a hobby, if it isn’t fun or if it is making me avoid real life, its not worth it.
That being said, I have done a little extra life living because of the blog. If I really want to stop running I may finish out my last 2 miles because I don’t want to be an online slacker. But thats kind of a good thing, right?!
Oh my gosh. That IS really sad! I have never heard anything like that… I need to make a recipe or write a blog post?! Really?!
Although… I keep declining invites because I have to study, so I should stfu.
I think it’s definitely good that our blogs encourage us to challenge ourselves, because we want to share it! 🙂
I err on the side of too few pics. In fact I WISH I had more pics to remember certain trips/events/friends/family. I’ve come to realize that if I don’t take pics, in my family nobody will so I’ve become the designated photog and things are better on that front. Pics bring back so many memories!
Every family has one!!! Do you like being the photo taker? 🙂
My phone died when we were in California, so I only got a few photos. I was really bummed about it.
That is a bummer!
I have very mixed feelings on photos. Well, kind of. Personally, I am all for photographing ALL THE THINGS! I think it’s great to have photos to look back on, no matter how mundane it may seem at the time. I mean, I took pictures of literally every Christmas decoration in my apartment this past winter, and whenever I happen to come across them, they make me smile because of the memories associated with them. Ditto that with most other pictures. On the other hand, I am SO camera shy, but not in the normal camera shy sense. I’m camera shy in the sense that I feel super duper weird taking pictures and having people see me do so. I don’t know why this is. Maybe because I prefer candids to posed photos when possible, and I feel like a creeper taking pictures of people when they don’t know I’m doing it. Haha. So I’m all about taking photos, but I don’t like people seeing me take photos. What a conundrum. I’d make a great member of the paparazzi though! 😛
This. This exactly.
I have a terrible memory so I like having pictures of the more mundane, little moments in life, but I always feel super awkward unless there’s someone else taking photos too.
I think that just means you are considerate! 😉 Because some people don’t want to be in photos.
I definitely have slowed down on my picture-taking, mainly because it seems like I’m always the only one that ever does it out of the people I’m with. I’ll take pics of a pretty view or if we’re all in “picture-taking mode,” but if not, I just soak it all up sans camera. 🙂
For sure, documenting life for me has gotten in the way of living life. I can’t count the number of big events that I’ve gone to where I was so busy trying to get the camera going and posed to take that perfect shot, that I missed the gist of the action altogether. But, there have also been many times where I did NOT take pictures and so wished that I had! That’s why our blogger network is especially awesome – between all of us, there will always be plenty of pictures to go around. =D
Yes! That is such a good point! I do love it when I can grab a pic from someone else, credit them, and don’t have to worry about taking ANY!
I, personally, am horrible at remembering to bust out my phone or my camera and get a photo. I’m usually just enjoying the moment. It’s why I wish we could take photos with our eyes and upload them to our computers!
Great post. I definitely ask myself this question. I’m glad you related to my comment about pulling out my camera. It’s funny because the next day I went to lunch with someone else who reads my blog and I did pull out my camera just to take a picture of my drink. I was worried she’d think there was something wrong with our conversation if I tried to take more pictures with her or of the day because she probably read that. It’s a strange balance. Sometimes taking pictures just works with the flow, and other times it’s more awkward. I guess just feeling the situation out is how I handle it…but when I don’t take pictures I sometimes wish I had picture documentation later but am okay with the fact that I didn’t in the moment. Does that even make sense? Ha.
Yeah, that does make sense! Sometimes I take photos of stuff because I want to remember it, and not to share it… and know I would regret it if I didn’t. Like if I saw a funny sign, or had a really yummy meal.
Sometimes I go through periods where I want to “lay low” online, and I feel like I’m in such a period right now. I just don’t feel the need to document everything for random strangers via the blog or “friends” via Facebook and would rather just enjoy the experience and leave it at that. Plus, I often question how much anyone else cares about what I do or think.
The only people who care are probably the ones you keep updated when you are laying low online. 😉 I think that is true for me, anyway! 😉
I’ve always felt the need to document events and things that I’ve done, so having a digital camera/smart phone/blog hasn’t really changed that for me. On WVT though, I’m finding that I look at things through the lens of “That will make a good post on the blog! I could say something funny!” Like, if I didn’t have a blog or an Instagram account, would I really take so many pictures of plates of food? Um, no, I would not.