A Moment to Last
For many people the weekend presents many great opportunities. There’s no school or work, and there’s the opportunity to go around. It’s an opportunity to tread on walkways way out of one’s routine paths.
It’s an opportunity to see new, different sights, as well. The sunset looks different when seen through a row of shanties in a depressed community than when through concrete structures in a business district. Different – but one is not necessarily more beautiful than the other, because the perception of beauty is somehow colored by the beholder’s background personal experience.
The beauty of the sunset stays there, for some time, as if luring one to appreciate it. The fizzy waves that lick the beach line at high tide are the same; it stays on for a while, giving onlookers the opportunity to relish the view. A solitary tree in a deserted field is a beauty that one may come back to behold again… and again.
It was something else on one recent Saturday afternoon. Traffic was heavy on the city’s Archbishop Reyes Avenue, starting at the flyover at the junction of Pope John Paul II Avenue all the way beyond the Cebu Country Club towards Banilad. Some people were beginning to grumble over the delay; others were getting out of cars and jeepneys.
But those who were getting out into the road were not grumbling – they were excited. Mobile phones soon began to be raised in everyone’s hands directed at what one called “the king of the road!” A stray cow was caught in the sea of motor vehicles as it tried to cross the street.
Such a dramatic sight that would not wait to allow one to relish it. One had to capture the moment at once. And what better way to do it than in a photograph?
Those that were not able to take a shot while traffic was moving again were dismayed. Not all of them, though. Others shook their heads and were smiling still. Perhaps they were able to get it – if not in their smartphone cameras, in themselves.
The person who is more keen in taking a picture of “the moment” is liable to lose a good part of it. When one’s focus is on the viewfinder, he or she isn’t likely to be able to fully experience what’s going on. And more, it’s very different when the intention for the photograph is for reliving the moment and when it’s for sharing on social media.
The fact that smartphones today have cameras makes it almost automatic for one to wave a phone at anything. It seems like people would rather take a photo than live the moment. And by their very effort of taking the picture, they opt themselves out of the experience.
And yet, there are people who swear that the photos they take bring them back to the moment. Well, it must have been the original intention of photography to capture the moment so people could re-live it. And it’s probably still true to this day – so long as photographs are taken for the right reasons.
Taking pictures can have all sorts of benefits, according to Elizabeth Stinson at www.wired.com citing studies about the effects of taking photos in people. Snapping photos can both enhance enjoyment and improve memory of certain experiences, although “it can also reduce auditory recall,” given that the person’s attention is normally focused on the subject being photographed.
Stinson also cites a conflicting finding by a psychologist, who likens taking photographs to exporting one’s memory to an external hard drive. “As soon as you click on the camera, it’s as if you outsource your memory and said to your brain you don't have to process any more information,” the psychologist says.
When it comes to maximizing photo-taking benefits, Stinson stresses, it really comes down to intent. A significant finding of the former studies is: “When we take photos with goal of sharing, it makes us think about how others are going to evaluate those photos. It makes us [more] concerned about how we're going to look to others and that can lead to selfconscious emotions like anxiety.”
Photographs have the power to bring people back to moments forgotten and feelings lost. Some moments have the power to color the human life experience. And photographs – whether in the mind or on the phone screen – can make these moments last.