Last weekend I attended a show at my daughter’s ballet school which was fun. It was at the Julia Morgan theater in Berkeley. As I sat in the somewhat dark performance theater, I started to notice the glow from 42 (I counted them) lcd displays as people filmed or snapped pics of the performance. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against folks trying to capture the ‘moment’, but as I watched people squirreling about in their seats to get the best shot, or yo-yo-ing back and forth from the stage for the same . I started to wonder, given all the effort people were putting into capturing the ‘moment’. How much of the moment were they missing ?
Sometimes I feel that we as a culture, are so bent on “capturing for posterity’s sake ” , that we forget sometimes,sitting back, paying close attention and letting the mind take it all in, is as important as “documenting” the moment. Digital technology seems to make it almost too easy to capture everything, yet we end up having much less in terms of actual memories that last.
For me, I shoot only stills (yes I have a vid camera) , and I’m not always dragging my camera around. I notice I have a better memory of the moment that way..
FWIW
