It’s the eternal question I deal with at every vacation, concert, at the tops of buildings, a beautiful sunset, or when the moon’s huge: what’s the worth of a picture, relative to the time and experiences you lose in getting it?

I’ve struggled with this a lot. I always argue with myself: if I take pictures and videos, maybe I can relive this time over and over again. But will I ultimately miss the original event in my obsession over its preservation? And what will I be missing while I’m busy revisiting it? Is life meant to be preserved and re-lived, or simply lived? Should I care what life is “meant” to be?

Wasting your life on taking, and enjoying pictures as an act of preservation, is, in my opinion, just that – a waste. This isn’t an argument against photography in general, because there’s definitely a place for it in a world where it doesn’t waste our lives. After all, how will the civilizations of the future realize how incredibly idiotic we were? But when it reaches the point where rather than enjoying the very thing we’re trying to preserve we ignore and thus waste it, photography loses its appeal.

Putting photography above all else in our lives ruins our experiences as a whole. There’s still something to be said for memories in their purest form, without a picture attached to them.