“When I settled down to sleep that night, I took stock of my incredible day, without question the best of my life, but I wondered to myself: to what degree did I live the day to the fullest versus trying to capture it via a viewfinder?”
My worst instance of this actually happened in pre-digital days…
I was in the Grand Palace complex in Bangkok. It’s a stunning place - a whirlwind of gold and colours and spires and statues. Pure visual sensation, everywhere you turned. I couldn’t resist getting busy with my camera.
Over the course of a couple hours, I burned through two rolls of film (yes, film - 48 exposures per roll) and was well into a third. I only stopped because the grounds were closing.
I realized to my horror that night that I had been so busy photographing the sights for posterity that I hardly even bothered to really look at everything while I was there. The temples, the figures, the giant gold Phra Si Rattana Chedi - gone.
Too much information, consumed in exactly the wrong way…
