A wonderful Spring day greeted us this morning. All the more remarkable as we are still in February. No pictures, though. Somehow it didn’t occur to me to capture the views*. Thinking about it, sometimes cameras do get in the way. There is much to be said for staying in the moment and for absorbing all that there is in that moment, without feeling the need to take a picture.
I once spent a week in South Africa, including three wonderful days in Cape Town, and then returned home with only three pictures – two of the Table Mountain (taken from a distance), and one of a lovely seal bathing in the sun. Of course I had seen and experienced far more than that. However, it hadn’t occurred to me to take more pictures. I think that somehow the act of taking pictures puts you ‘outside’ of the experience – you turn your attention instead to getting the perfect shot, and you interpose an intermediary (the camera lens) between yourself and the thing of beauty. I think that, at such moments, we cease to be in tune with our experience, and instead become objective observers of the world around us. Nothing wrong in that, but then we lose a part of the moment’s essence.
*I am supremely aware of the irony of using a photo for a post in which I go on about the need to experience life without feeling the need to take a photo.
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