Everyone snaps pics of their day wherever they are, but especially so when on vacation. The idea behind this is that we want to remember everything we did or saw. The next time you are out and about, take a moment to observe the countless people taking numerous random pictures. Whether or not that picture is actually a good one is a different story, but we all want to capture the moment we are experiencing. At the end of any trip you end up with hundreds, if not thousands, of miscellaneous photos that you probably don’t even remember what you were doing when you took them. To top things off, how many times are we actually going to go through all of them on a regular basis after the trip?
More often than not people will never look at these snaps again after they post them to social media. They snap the pic, apply a filter, then share to Instagram (or whatever the latest craze is at the time) and call it a day. They collect all the likes and are happy. Once that process is done, the image gets lost in the mix of everything else in their lives. So what can be done to help make your pictures more memorable? Is there any trick to turn them into something we can easily access without sifting through thousands of images?
Well the simplest thing is to stop taking so many damn pictures. This is definitely easier said than done, but there for some reason is the mindset that if we don’t take a picture of everything we will forget that moment in time. However, this is not true. If the moment is truly breathtaking, even the best photo will not be able to retell the whole story, your memories will. I’m not saying to eliminate all photography from your trips, but there has to be a balance between the number of photos you take and actually taking the time to enjoy yourself without worrying about documenting every waking moment.
The best thing you can do to help reduce the overflow of pictures taken is change your mindset behind your photography process. The next time you are about to take a picture stop and ask yourself, “What do I want to remember about this moment?” This will force you to slow down and soak in the moment for a few seconds. When you do this a few times you begin to realize what triggered your desire to snap a photo. Once you figure out what struck your interest at that point in time, you will be able to better capture the scene. Many times you might even decide that the moment is not very memorable and move on. Therefore, you end up with less photos of random crap and more pics of interesting, meaningful subjects.
Here’s a example of a trip to Japan I went on recently. Which photo do you like better?
A. The entire scene quickly snapped, which encompasses everything going on (exciting or not).
B. A zoomed in image highlighting people on boats enjoying the cherry blossoms.
Although some would still pick A (or both), image B tells more of a story. Let’s compare the two pictures. Image A lets you see everything that was going on, but nothing really strikes your attention or grabs your eyes to look at something. Contrarily, with image B the first thing you notice is the yellow boat. Your eyes are drawn to them, then they get curious and look at what they are doing. Your eyes move to the cherry blossoms and maybe notice the second boat. Overall this is a more pleasing image and you still achieve what you want to remember about the scene: people enjoying the cherry blossoms at the river.
Another suggestion is to review your photos at the end of the day and delete the ones you don’t want to keep. For example, if you take 50 to 60 pictures in one day, take a few minutes in the evening to decide which ones you like best, which ones you will edit, and which ones are just ‘fluff.’ Doing this daily is much less of a daunting task than at the end of the trip where you might end up with a few hundred to a few thousand pictures. What number sounds better to review: 50 or 1500?
Reviewing pictures will help improve the quality of your albums too. Quite often I am surprised at how boring some of the pictures I took back in the day look compared to when my mindset changed. Sure, there’s always the feeling of nostalgia when reviewing the photos, but nothing stands out to give them that ‘wow’ factor. I get bored and just quickly sift through the images. When you take more meaningful pictures you will enjoy going through them time and time again.
So the next time you are eager to fill up the memory card on your camera or phone, make sure you slow down and enjoy the moment a little more. You will find that before you know it, you images will become more interesting and memorable, even though you have hundreds less pictures. Your memories will fill in the gaps without you having take 10 pictures of the same building.
