Taking the photo and missing the moment

Today, I saw a meme on someone's status asking a simple questions: What are you going to do with the fireworks you recorded on 1st January?

I laughed. Then I felt slightly exposed. 

This was because somewhere in my phone is a blurry video of fireworks from New Year’s Eve 2024. The sky was exploding, bursting with beautiful colours. People were shouting at every explosion.  And instead of looking up, I was looking down for my phone, then adjusting my camera, zooming in, trying to capture the perfect burst of light.

I have never watched that video again. It is sitting there with a technical name like VID_20240101_000003.mp4, evidence that the year began with me watching amazing fireworks. 

And it’s not just fireworks.

This evening, I was taking an evening walk at the farm in the village after it had rained. The grass was that shade of green that only comes after a proper downpour. Cows were grazing lazily. The air was fresh in that way that makes you breathe a little deeper without thinking about it. The sun was beginning to set turning everything gold. The kind of light that makes even ordinary things like "outside countries".

And then I saw them.

A flock of about 20 Crested Cranes rose from the grass and flew low just above my head. Their wings were wide and steady with a slow and graceful flight. Wow! The gold in their crowns caught the fading sunlight. For a moment, everything felt perfectly arranged. It was beautiful. Truly and fully beautiful.

My first instinct was to reach for my phone.

I stood there trying to frame them properly. Zooming in and out, adjusting brightness. Switching from photo mode to portrait mode. Tilting my head this way and that way.

By the time I “got it,” the Cranes were already further away.

Later, after reading that meme about the New Year's photo, I realised something uncomfortable: In trying to capture a moment, I was barely experiencing. I was working to document it instead of simply standing in it, feeling it and enjoying it. And you know what, I will probably never rewatch that video either.

And it is not just fireworks or cranes.

It is the sunset that turns the sky orange for five dramatic minutes, and instead of standing still, we are switching between portrait and video mode. It is the lake unusually still, the reflection so clean it feels unreal, and instead of breathing it in, we are crouching for symmetry.

There is something about this habit of ours. We see something beautiful and immediately convert it into content. As if the moment must be captured for it to be real. As if we do not trust our experiential memory. My concern is not that we have photos. It is that maybe in trying to preserve the moment, we step slightly outside it. We are there, yes, but not fully in the moment. 

I am not saying we should never take pictures. I love photos. I take them often, very beautiful ones, at that. I encourage people to take them. Some of my favourite memories are tied to images I almost forgot until I scrolled back and found them again. A single photo can reopen a whole season. Pictures do matter. a lot They hold our past and keep our memories. They turn "moments into memories."

But there is a difference between taking a picture and missing a moment. Sometimes the camera enhances the memory, and sometimes it interrupts it.

I am not against photos. I am against the automatic reflex, the way we rush to document before we have fully seen. It is not a question about whether or not we should take pictures. It is about whether we have stood in the moment long enough.

From where my feet are, I need to keep in mind that not everything needs to be archived. The next time I see Cranes flying past,  I hope I remember that not every moment needs proof, because some moments are enough just as they are.