By: Denise Kyeremeh (’23), Staff Writer
Since I was a kid, I’ve disliked taking photos in the midst of experiencing something remarkable. When my family went on trips, my dad would follow us around with a camera in hand. I just wanted to be in the moment and enjoy what was in front of me.
Most of us go through life experiencing the same mundane realities and occasionally experience something worth pausing for. I remember visiting Niagara Falls for the first time and being surprised by the amplified sound of the falls and the feeling of the mist on my face. Yet when I think of that memory, I also see the photo that sits in my family’s living room that we took that day. Photos and videos can transport us back to our favorite moments. They can also remind us of the details that fade with time or the ones we missed the first time. When I look at the photos of my family and myself from the time that I was a kid, it’s interesting to see how much I’ve changed. When I finally asked my dad why he was so adamant about taking photos, he told me it was because he did not have any pictures from his childhood and he wished he did.
Pictures have the ability to freeze a moment in time and allow us to revisit it repeatedly. My childhood home is full of photo albums that bring joy to anyone who flips through them because they depict the journey of our lives. As I grew up though, the majority of my memories were not captured by my father’s camera. My friends and I captured our adolescent years on our smartphones, taking selfies during big moments and small ones. Cell phones with video cameras allowed everyone to be amateur photographers, giving them the ability to preserve an event instantly. Now, this ability has become reflexive. As soon as we see something special, we fumble for our phones to save it for later. There have been many quick-passing views that I’ve missed trying to find my camera. We lose the ability to absorb the fullness of the moment when we are busy trying to record it.
Smartphones not only gave people the ability to save their memories, but they also fueled an industry of memory sharing by proliferating social media. People could post their experiences and adventures for anyone to see. Platforms like Instagram are hubs for educating, networking, and creating supportive communities, but they can also create atmospheres of comparison and performance. Influencers and like-buttons can cause people to slip into posting with the intent of presenting a specific online persona.
In the earlier days of YouTube, there was a niche of creators who prided themselves on filming their lives every single day. After years of making this content, these people would often share that they felt like they were doing certain things just to make their videos interesting. They were pursuing experiences so that their videos would not be boring. While most people may not strive to be influencers and make money from their social media posts, there can still be pressure to maintain digital appearances and get that perfect shot. There is nothing wrong with wanting to save a moment. It illuminates the joy that accompanies precious experiences. Revisiting cherished memories is a gift that younger generations will experience in ways unlike those before them. Even though our cameras capture events in high-definition, they will never encompass the entirety of it. Our cameras cannot hold the feelings of the moment. If we allow ourselves to get caught up in recording rather than feeling, our memories of those moments will remain dull and incomplete. Even though I may not remember every detail of my favorite views and events, I remember the awe that accompanied those moments. I have heard it said that “there are only so many moments in our lives where we truly feel alive.” Usually, in those moments I think to myself, “I’ll never forget this moment. I never want to forget this moment.” Memories cannot always be as potent in our minds as the time we experienced them because they fade with time and lose vibrancy. I have learned to commit the sounds, sights, smells, and most importantly the way I feel in the moment to memory before clicking the record button. Instead of relying on our camera rolls to immortalize our experiences, we can learn to engage with all our senses and surroundings to create richer memories. It is important that we balance the ways we save our memories so that we can be both fully present and have media to treasure. In my opinion, we must invest in the here and now because it will always exceed the digital version.
