On the value of second-hand experiences
Amanda Parks recently wrote for The Social Interface about the expectation that we share our experiences via social media, and wondered if becoming pre-occupied with our media activities sometimes gets in the way of the experience we're supposedly enjoying. A few days after reading Parks' article, I happened to be seated on a train carriage behind a couple busily photographing and filming a good part of a trip from New South Wales' Southern Highlands to Campbelltown.
Prior to owning a digital camera, I rarely took photographs at all because I found that the photographs rarely reproduced much of the experience that had inspired me to take them. This may say something about my ability as a photographer. Since purchasing a digital camera, I've been more inclined to take photographs while hiking or travelling alone, and I find that looking back over them does frequently evoke the memory or being in that place even if the photographs aren't going to win any awards.
I still almost never take photographs while socialising. Sometimes I think it might be nice to be able to look back over a record of a good time, and I do occasionally glance over photographs taken by friends. But while I'm actually engaged in the socialising, it seems awkward and artificial to dig out a camera. Watching the couple filming their train ride, I thought: why don't you stop fiddling with those awkward-looking tablet things and just enjoy the experience? And whatever happened to that advice to never look like a tourist?
Presumably Sydney's intercity rail network is less mundane to that couple than it is to me. And obviously plenty of people feel that they can pull out a camera with a lot more aplomb than me. But how much does anyone actually care about the results? Well before anyone coined the term "social media", I remember comedians getting plenty of laughs out of travellers boring their friends with post-holiday slide shows. Parks similarly concludes her article with an anecdote illustrating the disappointing result of sharing photographs that seem wondrous to the person who experienced the event, but are only cheap second-hand experiences for everyone else.
Perhaps being better photographers would improve our friends' experiences. After all, talented photographers, film-makers and writers can make a living out of travel books and documentaries. But, to go by my own experience of writing publishable papers, I doubt that even those talented folks publish everything they record. However the act of recording might affect the experience itself, perhaps we need to remember that frequent communication is not the same as good communication.
