I know there’s one school of thought that says, when you’re out there living life you should put your damn camera away and just take it all in. And fair enough too. We’ve all seen people ‘watching’ concerts through their smart phones instead of being in the moment. So I completely understand why people say we should take it all in more and take less photos.

When I think of that, I’m reminded of that scene in The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty when Sean Penn’s character waits all that time to shoot the elusive snow leopard (with a camera), then when he finally spots it, decides not to and just watches it instead.

So I’m sure there are moments when you should put the camera down and just… be. And we all know pics and vids are so easy to take now, we are a lot less discerning and just take them of anything and everything, and never even look back at half of them sometimes. (I wonder, how many people ever watch those dodgy blurry concert vids they take ?)

But for me, I’m gonna call it: I freakin’ love taking photos because my memory just isn’t that great – and not getting any better! So I get a lot of joy out of stumbling across old, and even not so old photos, some of which I’d completely forgotten about, and getting joy from those experiences all over again.

Sometimes when I’m on an adventure, I take a bunch of pics, choose a few to share at the time, and never even go back to the others for quite a while. Then, days like yesterday, I need to find a shot for work or something, and I go back to the master images and find a whole heap that have not only never seen the light of day, even I’ve never even seen them! It’s pretty epic when that happens.

So maybe the secret is just about that elusive ‘balance’ concept I’m so bad at. Sometimes, take photos. Sometimes, don’t. Either way, make your moments count.

Sputnik