living the moment vs capturing the moment

I've been browsing on mjp's site and found this interesting post from last year. Check out the half from the Iggy Pop photo onwards. It's thought provoking.

Basically he's bawling out our tendency to take a perfectly brilliant moment and ruin it by focusing on getting it on film. Instead of soaking up an experience that will never come again, you're mentally (maybe literally) stepping back to line up your shot. It's a solid truth that you can either live the moment or view it as an observer. But you can't do both.

Steve Chandler expresses a similar idea in his book 17 Lies That Are Holding You Back. One of those lies is "It's a shame we didn't capture that on video." He sees this as a motivation killer. It's LIVING life that urges us forward and makes us hungry for more, not documenting moments as if that record is proof we really did live.

I find myself doing this all the time, convincing myself that I have to get something in a photo. It's almost like if I can't put it in an album, it didn't really happen. Don't get me wrong. I know the value of a great photo. But I also know how easy it is for an experience to be stripped down to the point where the most exciting part becomes the photos you got.

I distinctly remember one occasion where I did pass up the chance to take a photo. It was a night in Tokyo when I went out post-concert with a couple of band members I liked. Now it seems normal, but at the time it was exciting because I'd never before been invited along. I liked being with them amongst their own friends, and I didn't even know that two of the other women there were also fans until the end of the night...when they took their cameras out. And I couldn't do it. I didn't want to need a photo of that night in order to savour it. I think that 'photo op' would have changed what the night was about for me, if I'd taken it.