vintage green car driving on Havana’s malecon near the ferry piers & warehouses
Taking And Presenting Travel Photos Without Discarding Memories
Photographs offer a tangible way to recall memories of your adventures, but research, reported on in Vice, suggests that photo-taking can sometimes impair your ability to remember an event first-hand.
This is called the photo-taking impairment effect, and the basic theory is that you become more concerned with getting a good photo than enjoying a situation and committing it to memory. There are simple ways to get around this effect. Combining this with some basic photography skills will give you great recall of your trip.
Stop worrying
The first and most straightforward step is to stop worrying about your photograph. If you find yourself spending increasing amounts of times trying to find the perfect shot, consider lowering the bar a little. Instead, why not take a few, decent quality photos, that encapsulate a part of a trip that means a lot to you, and combine them into a photo collage or a simple frame. Not every vacation photo needs the quality to be blown up across a huge canvas. In an article by expert photographers, Forbes advocated for this approach, recommends getting good with a camera and taking single, impact-ful images, to help recall your adventures. Slow down, live ‘in the moment’, and consider photographs an added bonus.
photo care of pixabay free downloads
Change your equipment
Smartphone photography has led to the explosion of easily taken and quickly forgotten photos. This has led to the culture of taking huge amounts of photos in hopes of finding the one perfect one; according to the HuffPost, certain Instagram influencers will take up to 200 photos for a single post.
Consider moving to an old-school analogue camera, or only taking a single memory card with you on your trip. This will have two benefits. Firstly, with limited opportunities for photo taking, you’ll be sure to consider your scene in depth and get it right the first time.
Secondly, without the backup of the cloud to keep your photos safe, you’re that much more likely to take care of your equipment and give your hobby serious thought.
Value your work
If you’ve taken steps to reduce your worry and take a photograph while still being ‘in the moment’, it’s then important to make sure you look at your photos. Get them printed, or make them visible on your devices. Don’t consign them to a folder in the depths of your PC, or on a cloud storage website that you rarely access.
According to an Inc article, memory has to be cultivated. By taking fewer, better quality photos, and amalgamating them into a photo album, you will have a thoughtful and accessible way to recall your memories of a trip and build up a lifetime connection with it.
On your next vacation, think about what you’re doing, not what your photos will look like down the line. Science shows that this will improve your memory and enjoyment of the trip. Take less photos, make them better quality, and create a physical reminder in your home – all of this will be preferable to the digital photo spam of the modern age.
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Hi! I'm Lash, an American nomadic world traveler who's been traveling solo since 1998. I’m passionate about traveling the world nomadically and then sharing it all with you. I hope to inspire you to travel the world, to entertain you with tales from the road, and to help you reach your travel dreams. Welcome! 
