The photo above took a while to get. It’s from our Caribbean cruise back in December, taken on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, down the beach a ways from the Soggy Dollar bar. I spent a good ten minutes there standing ankle-deep in the surf with my DSLR and a telephoto lens, watching a flock of frigate birds wheeling around overhead and trying to catch one of them passing in front of the crescent moon.
This seemed like a pretty good alternative to just day-drinking (which was pretty much the only other activity available on the island), but I’m pretty sure that a bunch of the other people there thought I was an idiot. That spending a bunch of time obsessively tracking the same birds was a waste of a morning on a classic Caribbean beach. That I was failing in some way by not putting the camera down and just soaking up the vibe, or “living in the moment.”
I think that’s a mistake— if anything, I would say that I was more aware of the setting and the moment by virtue of having the camera. Had I not been looking for a good photo opportunity, I don’t know that I would’ve noticed the combination of the birds and the moon. Because I was trying to get a good picture, I was a little more attuned to the details of what was going on around me that I otherwise might’ve been, and as a result captured a pretty cool moment.
Now, you might reasonably question whether I needed to be taking pictures of frigate birds wheeling around the moon, given that we live in a world with both professional photographers and Google Image Search. It’s not at all hard to find better images of a frigate bird in front of the moon— here’s one on Pinterest— taken by people with more skill and better gear than I bring to the table (or beach, whatever). And, in fact, I can find plenty of fault with my photo.
The important thing, though, is that this one is mine. It’s not just a visual I happen to think is cool, it’s a kind of documentation of a cool moment that I captured myself, however imperfectly. It’s proof that I was there, that I experienced that moment.
I’m thinking about this today because of this photo of LeBron James breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career scoring record on Tuesday night:
This is a great sports photo, and terrific work by Andrew Bernstein (if the watermark on a different version of the image can be trusted). It’s also been the occasion for a lot of tut-tutting tweets about all the people with their phones out taking photos or videos rather than “experiencing the moment.”
And, you know, it’s true that none of the people in that image are going to end up with a photo or video as iconic and high-quality as this image or any of the many others produced by the professional photographers and videographers crowding the arena that night. But just as my flawed image of that bird doing the Batman thing in front of the moon is special to me because it’s mine, every one of those people is going to have a version of this moment that’s theirs. A document, however imperfect, of their experience of that moment.
I’m not entirely against complaining about people being on their phones too much, but as I said on Twitter in response to a chiding quote-tweet of this image, I don’t think this is an example of the actual problematic kind of phone overuse. These people (and thousands of others in the arena) are taking a photo of a historical event that they’re witnessing in person— they are “experiencing the moment,” through the act of framing and documenting it. Their experience of that moment is every bit as valid and important to them as that of the notably camera-less guy sitting on the baseline (who some versions of this identify as Nike head Phil Knight, but I don’t care enough to check that).
The kind of phone addiction that’s an actual problem, in the sense of being corrosive to human experience, isn’t using the camera feature to document something you’re actually doing, but using the connectivity to “be” elsewhere. The problem isn’t people holding up their phones to record a moment of their own experience, it’s people looking down at their phones to follow someone else’s experience instead. The guy in the arena I feel bad for is the one who’s not taking a photo because he’s busy having a quote-tweet slapfight with some egg avatar from a seat that he paid hundreds of dollars to occupy, which he could just as well do for free from the parking lot of a local McDonald’s.
As with basically everything, of course, there’s a significant de gustibus element to this whole thing— if you’re someone who finds that taking photos distracts from your own experience of an event, I can’t argue with that. And I fully support your decision to not take advantage of modern technology to take pictures of video of events as you experience them. Just, you know, please extend the same respect to the different tastes and preferences of others who feel differently about the interaction between experience and the documentation thereof.
This is hardly a unique argument, I know—people have been having versions of this fight since the invention of the camera, and for all I know back to the invention of realistic art. (“Must you paint every landscape we see? Can’t you just experience it?”) This is, however, my version of it. Should you like it, here’s a button:
And if you’d like to take up the other side (or just document your agreement), the comments will be open:
Part of the reason I got into photography, back in grad school, was so that I could have prints of my own photos to put on the wall, which I've actually done a pretty poor job of. Turns out, deciding which of the dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of photos I've taken are worth enlarging and getting framed is its own stumbling block.
I do often ask myself, at a particularly scenic spot, why is it that I need my own photo of it, when there are better ones done by better photographers with better equipment. I just do. I also occasionally attempt ambitious cooking projects, even though I'm not as good as a professional chef. And I DIY all sorts of stuff around the house, even though I'm not by any means a professional tradesman.
There's a certain curiosity: what makes a photo work, what makes a dish work, what makes a house work, that can only get satisfied by doing. And in all cases, even an amateur's intermediate skill certainly helpful when no professional is available, and in knowing when you really do need to turn to a professional, and in evaluating a professional who might do work for you.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1314/