Taking photos - heaven or hell?

Is taking photos when travelling a good thing or a bad thing?  This may seem like a strange question, but sometimes I do wonder whether it's worth it.

Obviously there are good reasons for taking them.  Primarily they hold memories.  They can be a memory in themselves, of the particular person or thing that you saw, or they can jog your own memory into remembering other details about what was happening when the photo was taken.

They also give you a way to share some of you memories and experiences with other people.  When you want to describe the way a building looked, or an amazing view, it can be much easier to just show someone a picture.  An you can't really imagine the sight of a whole fried guinea pig on your plate unless you actually see it!

But does anyone really want to look at hundreds of holiday photos - or thousands as it will be in our case?  They are our memories, not theirs.  And how often do you actually look at your own photos?  I like the way that you can make them up into a book now, and I think that does make it a bit easier to look at more often, but even so, it just isn't something that most people do that often.

Then there is the quality of the photo.  I don't pretend to be a good photographer, and I don't have a fancy camera.  Even the settings that I do have I hardly use.  I am definitely of the point and click breed.  So the quality of my photos is a bit haphazard. But even when they are decent photos, the picture doesn't really do justice to the reality.  Frequently I look back at photos of something and they're not a patch on the real thing.  I took loads of the Bolivian altiplano and whilst some of them are nice pictures, they don't show the true beauty of the place or evoke the same feeling of wonderment that all of us there experienced when we saw it first hand.

But even if my photos were always perfect, I simply don't take some of the ones that I most want because I feel like I would be intruding or being rude.  I really wanted to be able to take some close up pictures of the women in Bolivia and Peru in their traditional dress, one about their day, but it felt far too rude to go up to a person and stick a camera in their face.  I would hate it if someone  did that to me as I was walking around London, even if they asked first.  And I know that there're still some people who believe that having their picture taken is bad; some even still believe that it can take their soul, and it would be terrible to cause that kind of offense to a person.  Then there are just the times when the opportunity for that fabulous photo is so brief that by the time you have your camera ready, you've missed your chance.  

Another issue is that when you are spending all of your time taking pictures, you often don't actually look properly at what you are taking a photo of and so don't spend enough time simply appreciating it, absorbing it, and forming the memory for later.  When I was on safari, I was so happy to see the male lion close up that when he walked right next to me I didn't even try to take a picture even though I had my camera in my hand.  And whilst I can't show anyone the picture of the lion, the memory is so vivid that's don't need a picture to remind me of it.

It's not just the time taking the photos either, you have to spend time uploading them, editing them, putting captions on so that later you can remember who or what they are of, and putting them in an album or book.  That time could be better spent actually doing more things.

But the biggest risk is one that has been brought home to me sharply over the last weeks.  And that is the devastation that you feel when you lose those photos.  We have had five people lose photos on this trip.  One person lost a photo card when it fell out of her bag.  Another got a virus of some form in his camera and it wiped everything.  A third, someone who was our most avid photographer and video taker who kept it all on his laptop, had his laptop stolen from a bus from Banos to Quito.  A fourth had her camera stolen at knife point in Quito old town.  And a fifth lost her camera in the fire at Shangri-la.  All of them are, quite understandably, very upset to have lost their photos, which they know they can never replace.  Of course others on the trips have all offered to give copies of our photos, but we know that it isn't the same.  If it isn't your photo then it isn't your memory.

And it's no point in saying well the photos should be backed up because it just isn't possible to do that all the time when you're on the move like we are.  Access to computers or Internet is limited and you don't have that much time available to do it regularly if you want to see the places you visit.  So you balance the risk and hope that you're not the unlucky person who gets affected.

So the sensible part of me says that taking photos doesn't make sense.  That we should focus our energies on seeing and enjoying what is there in front of us, forming the memory well enough to be able to remember without relying in the fragility of a photo.

Bu the sensible part is losing to that urge to capture the moment.  The knowledge that I won't remember everything I've seen if I don't have something to jog my memory into action.  The desire to be able to share at least some of those memories with others.

So I have taken far too many photos and will continue to do so.  I will try to make sure they are uploaded safely so that I don't lose them even if I lose the camera and laptop, but I will accept the risk that I still might.  And I will look back at them remembering not only the scene in the picture, but the story behind it and the photo that I really wanted to take but didn't or couldn't.