The Analogue Series · Part 3
How often do we watch a beautiful sunset through the camera lens of our phone?
We hold it up, adjust the angle, take a photograph, perhaps a video, check whether we’ve captured the colours properly and then put it away. All the while, the sun is setting in front of us.
Another day gone.
I love photography, don’t get me wrong. I love the creativity of capturing light and colour. I love looking back at photos, remembering places I’ve visited, people I’ve met and little moments from everyday life.
But… several years ago, I started to wonder whether we’re sometimes so busy recording an experience, perhaps for others, that we forget to actually experience it for ourselves. So, over the months and years, I’ve been making a conscious effort to decide when to record and when simply to experience.
Think about the recent near-total solar eclipse, for example. Something extraordinary happening above us, and our initial instinct is often to reach for our phone. We want to capture it, keep it, share it. Yet there’s something rather special about simply standing still and witnessing something remarkable, something that might not happen again in that particular place for generations.
I was reminded of this when I arrived in Santiago after walking 285km of the Camino. I’d spent weeks walking towards that moment, and finally there I was, in front of that famous cathedral.
But I didn’t immediately reach for my phone to take selfies. Instead, I found a place to sit under the cloisters and simply savoured the moment. I watched people walk past on their way to work and a few early pilgrims, like me, arrive. But most importantly, I sat and took notice of my own feelings, I wrote them down.
I reflected.
I took photographs later, of course. I wanted those memories too. But I didn’t need to capture everything the moment I arrived.
Not immediately reaching for our phones gives us something else too: the opportunity to slow down. We don’t need to rush through life, moving from one photo opportunity to another, always looking for the next thing to capture. We can take our time, enjoy the journey and allow ourselves to appreciate what’s happening right in front of us.
Perhaps that’s something worth rediscovering. Not abandoning our cameras or putting our phones away forever, but allowing ourselves a little time before reaching for them.
Some moments don’t need documenting to be remembered. Sometimes it’s the feelings, the sounds, the atmosphere and the little details that stay with us long after the moment has passed.
A photograph can remind us what something looked like. But being fully present in a moment gives us something a photograph never quite can: the memory of how it felt to be there. The sounds, the smells and the emotions.
And perhaps, occasionally, the best thing we can do is put the phone away and just absorb it all for a moment.
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