photos

Lately, mum has really been getting into photography, taking photos, and working with Photoshop. Apart from upgrading the old digital camera (5 megapixels) and buying a newer and even bigger one overseas, she's also started taking portraits and doing photoshoots at home, by converting the lougeroom into a studio with a black screen and all. Surprisingly (for me) the results have been quite good, and so some of them have even ended up framed, and are around the house now.

Anyway, the other day I got to thinking why people take photos, and of course, why I do too. When I went travelling, I think the main motivation for me was to have a record of what I did, where I went to, and with who. I've found that it's actually been really difficult to remember many of my previous vacations with my family, and especially those when I was a lot younger. I might remember the names of the places I've been to, or one or two spots or occasions during a trip, but for the most part, I wouldn't have much vivid recollection of what happened. That way, I find that for my latest trip, in taking pretty much as many photos as I possibly could (thank God for digital cameras), that it's much easier to remember the things that happened around those times. I can just flick through the album, remember what happened in the scene, and then the rest of the day would also flow out from my memory eventually. This, I assume, is what happens with most people.

Another reason I had taken photos, was to capture beauty. There were many places that I had visited that may have had an aura of calmness to it, or perhaps it was just that moment when everything seemed right, or that a view was simply stunning. In either case, I think that it is the memory of the feeling of that particular place, or the emotion that it generated, that I had tried to capture. This of course is interpreted by different people looking at the photo in different ways - it'll generally mean less to people who have never been there, especially when looking at a small 4x6 photo in your hand. It just isn't the same as being there - though I guess the art in photography lies in trying to capture all that in this little piece of paper you have.

Another reason still, is purely for the sake of documenting a scene, or taking a shot purely for the information that you can obtain from the picture. When we were walking on some of the bushwalking trails, we encountered the little information boards talking about this and that. At first, we would stop and have a quick read, but after a while, finding this a bit tedious, we thought to take a photo of the board, and read it on the camera later. I guess this would be an example of that (though we never did go back and read them at the time).

The final reason I encountered on my trip was for a trophy. Here, we would find people going up to famous landmarks, doing various poses with various combinations and permutations of the people in the group, and then leave. Of course, I wasn't immune to this either. The annoying thing (as a friend exaperatingly pointed out) were the people there who flocked to these places, ran to the monument, took a few trophy shots, and then left again - all without actually enjoying the place or looking around at anything else. Later, we assumed, they would go back to their friends and family and brag at all the lovely places they've been to - without actually getting to know whether the place was that good or not. It seems rather pointless to do this, and it calls into question what the point of a trip is, but the thing is that this phenomenon didn't seem that rare. Hopefully, we didn't commit these same sorts of atrocities, at least not too much.