The Disease of Infinite Bursts

Scroll through your phone. You probably have more photos than your grandparents took in their entire lifetimes. But here’s the catch: you’ll forget most of them exist, or worse, you took those photos, but you haven’t looked at them once after. Then I ask you: why did you take it in the first place?

The Overproduction Problem

Gallery Clutter

When phones stopped being phones and became our cameras, we all suddenly were given a super power: we all became paparazzis. It’s now accepted to take photos everywhere, all the time, without even realizing what’s going on around us. A feel problems arise from this new way of being “photographers”:

We end up with thousands of duplicates of the same thing, many of them shaky or without any purpose whatsoever. What are we doing with these duplicates? Remember that birthday cake you photographed last time? You probably have 15 photos of it, and - are you actually enjoying all those photos of the cake, or you don’t remember anything at all?

What happens is that we made photos into “clutter” rather than precious memories. You look at your gallery and you can’t find what you want, you have to scroll fast to go over thousands of useless photos, and you eat up all your phone storage.

Why It Feels Empty

Besides the fact you don’t remember that cake photo that was “so precious” that you took 20 photos of it, you have so many photos in your gallery that the value of the memories is not there anymore. We get numb to the emotion of that moment.

I truly believe a photo only matters if it lives, breathes, and gets seen.

Are your photos “living” and “breathing”? Or are they empty pixels, maybe beautiful, but empty?

The Shift: From Hoarding to Choosing

Remember when we had to buy the film rolls, and we were so happy to have the 36-exposure roll. It meant “I have a lot of photos to take”, but still, 36. You still had to choose which 36 moments were worth saving.

You had to see the moment carefully, feel the emotion, and think about how much you wanted to have that memory for later. Then you’d get home, send the film to the lab, and get a little album that you would look from time to time, or show your guests. They were 36 precious memories from that travel, or that event, and you lived that emotion again and again.

What gave meaning to those photos was exactly the fact you slowed down, and carefully picked that moment as a special moment to be remembered.

A special moment - India, 2024

My Challenge for You

Over the next six blog posts I’ll talk more about what’s beyond the click, and the human side of photography, so stay tuned, but right now, look at your gallery and think: “am I hoarding or am I curating my special memories?”

If your gallery is a graveyard, maybe it’s time to stop shooting for the algorithm and start shooting for yourself.