Resolution and an award
Stop taking photos. I’ve been sorting through photos for days and still haven’t actually looked at all the photos I took on this holiday. The strange thing is that there are entire stretches where my batteries were flat, I left the camera at the hotel and all manner of reasons why I had half days all throughout the trip where I didn’t have a camera and I still managed to take far too many photos.
The thing that really gets me though is that I don’t actually look at my photos. I have a few up around the house from various trips and times and they are lovely but I don’t go through photo albums or look at any saved pictures. I didn’t when I went to Thailand and I haven’t from any of the holidays I’ve had in Australia, so why do I keep taking photos?
I think it comes down to freezing a moment. If you see something then you’ll remember it but the memory gets hazy quickly. If you see something, line up a photo, frame it and press click you have far more chance of remembering what you saw. Possibly.
I guess the other problem is that most things look better in reality than they ever will in the photo. There are so many other sensations of sound and smell and just the presence of the place that they photo just doesn’t capture. It can’t capture how you felt standing in that place at that time. That’s probably true of any medium. Words don’t capture everything, images don’t, film doesn’t, in the end it is up to us to hold on to the memories.
Okay…
I’ve also been given a lovely blogger award.
Thanks Susie for the award. Here are the rewards.
- Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award. Thanks again Susie!
- Share 7 things about yourself. See below.
- Pass the award along to 5* bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (*Changed from 15 to 5, but I’ll leave it up to you the amount you want to give.) Also see below.
- Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award. To do…
Seven things about me that you can’t read on my ABOUT page:
1. I am a collector of some really random things.
2. When working I listen to music but I don’t listen to entire songs.
3. I love watching movies over and over again and pulling apart the plots.
4. When I was in highschool I loved watching SeaQuest but when I bought the first season on DVD I realised I really can’t remember why I liked it.
5. I don’t like toast but I love the word toast.
6. I eat when I’m bored.
7. My favourite colour to write in is green.
As to passing this award along… By the way if you want to know why I’ve given them the award, click on the link and check out these very interesting blogs.
Congratulations and thanks for writing such amazing blogs.
I’m hopefully going to be resuming a more normal posting schedule and will be back tomorrow.
16 Comments
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Cassandra Jade in the Realm 
Carol J. Garvin said,
July 17, 2010 at 12:14 am
Congratulations on the award, Cassandra. Yours really is a lovely blog, so it’s well deserved!
As for the picture taking… I can sympathize! I remember a cross-Canada trip our family took many, (very many) years ago, before I had a digital camera. Getting films developed was costly and I was frugal, but because I didn’t expect I’d ever make the trip again, I decided it wouldn’t matter how many photos I took. It ended up being 19 rolls of 36mm film, all slides. We viewed the slides several times and then put them away. This spring I was sorting through a box of slides and decided I would never look at them again, and threw them out, along with several others! It was hard to do, but I have SO many old pictures I never look at.
Now I have a digital camera and I love it. I can take an unlimited number of shots, discard the mediocre ones, print or not print some and save everything on CDs and DVDs. I’m surprised at how often I pull up my iPhoto software to select a picture to accompany a blog or just to enjoy… something I couldn’t and didn’t do with the slides and other old snapshots. I think the problem was that I was trying to be too frugal and most times only took one shot of a scene or situation, only to find it didn’t turn out as well as I hoped. Now I take several from different angles, etc., and usually get at least one I love. I’ve heard that the difference between an average photographer and an exceptional one is in the number of bad shots the exceptional one never shows anyone. Probably a lot of truth to that. 🙂
Cassandra Jade said,
July 17, 2010 at 7:46 am
I do love digital cameras. Instant deletion ability and yet I still end up taking far too many photos.
Casey Lybrand said,
July 17, 2010 at 1:59 am
Congrats on the award, Cassandra! Your blog is lovely.
I like the idea of not taking pictures — sometimes. I take a lot of photos, myself, and find I do use them. I want to have them to display, in my home or on my computer, to call up memories. It’s true, though, the photos cannot truly capture the actual experience. As much as I enjoy photos, there are times when I want the experience itself to take center stage; I don’t want to worry about the experience being upstaged by the attempt to get a good shot. I’m willing to leave the camera at home, or at least in my bag. Sometimes.
Carol, I find that about one in every ten to twenty shots I take is okay, and only about one in one hundred would I consider really good. (Don’t know if I’ve ever taken an exceptional photograph.) I love my digital camera for the same reasons you mention! I really do take (and use) a lot of photos.
Cassandra Jade said,
July 17, 2010 at 7:47 am
I consider any picture where I actually hit the thing I was aiming at to be exceptional – I really don’t have the patience to be good a photography.
Mason Canyon said,
July 17, 2010 at 2:29 am
Congratulations on the award Cassandra. It is well deserved as your blog is lovely. I’m honored that you thought of me when passing the award on. As for the photo taking, all I can say is that in time you will probably appreciate the photos more than you do now. It’s nice years later to be able to look at photos of how a place looked or the people we know. In my book you can never have too many photos even though you might not look at them but once a year or every few years. Just think about passing them on to the next generation too.
Thanks again.
Mason
Thoughts in Progress
Cassandra Jade said,
July 17, 2010 at 7:48 am
Glad to pass the award on to you Mason, your blog is excellent and I love visiting it.
Barb said,
July 17, 2010 at 6:48 am
I took 1675pics during my trip to the US this year (2000 last year) and posted a “best of” (60) on Facebook… I call myself the “click and go” girl, lost count of how many sky/cloud/landscape-that-looks-good pictures I’ve taken… luckily with the digital version, they don’t take as much space as the previous ones (lost count also of the photo albums from the 80s to around 2005!)! 🙂
Thanks for the award…
Barb
Cassandra Jade said,
July 17, 2010 at 7:49 am
I finally posted some photos on facebook, not a lot but enough to give the overall impression. It is difficult when I took most of my photos of the people I was travelling with and yet I can’t post them online. I have some beautiful photos that won’t ever be shared. Shame.
Agatha82 said,
July 17, 2010 at 11:16 am
I definitely relate to taking too many photos. I do it all the time, I have a tendency of walking around with a camera to begin with, which is nice sometimes as I can come across unexpected things. Sometimes, I use my photos for my writing. It helps me remember a place and how it looked and how it felt. Anyway, congrat on the lovely blog award 🙂
Lua said,
July 17, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Congratulations on the award Cassandra! 🙂 And thank you for the links of all those amazing blogs.
I eat when I’m bored too! That’s why I always try to distract myself with a good book 🙂
AlexJ said,
July 17, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Thank you, Cassandra!
My wife takes a lot of photos as well. We look at them once and then it may be years before we look at them again. But it is all about capturing a moment in time.
Helen Ginger said,
July 17, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Congrats on the award!
I’m a bit like you when it comes to pictures. I don’t have a fancy camera, but do have one that’s small enough to carry easily. I’ll take pictures then forget to download them to my computer – forget about them altogether. Which, of course, reminds me I’m about to leave for another trip and haven’t downloaded old pictures or even charged up the camera. Sheesh.
Straight From Hel
Cassandra Jade said,
July 17, 2010 at 10:03 pm
The charging the camera is the part I always forget, which might be why it goes flat so quickly when I’m on holiday.
Melissa said,
July 17, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Congratulations on the award. That’s really great!
I take so many pictures, it’s insane. Sometimes, I feel like I need to capture every moment and then my camera becomes full with pictures before I even know it. It takes me hours to upload them on my computer.
But, pictures do inspire me, so I guess it’s worth it!
Helen Ginger said,
July 17, 2010 at 11:04 pm
Congrats on the award.
I was just downloading pics from my camera onto my computer. I hadn’t taken a lot, but they were from months ago. Had to go back to check my calendar just to be able to date them.
various topics & an award « creative barbwire (or the many lives of a creator) said,
July 20, 2010 at 7:06 am
[…] And finally, I got another blog award, thanks to Cassandra. […]