So many photos to take, but then what?
Visiting new places or returning to old favorites has involved picture taking since the advent of affordable, easy to use cameras and services to process and print the film. With digital cameras tied to cell phones, the great majority of people now carry a combination camera and telecommunicator in their pocket.
Watching a stream of visitors coming to see the ancient temple grounds of Soto Zen Buddhism’s head temple, Eihei-ji, nearly everyone had some way to record photos. As an extension of one’s eyes and with a habit for thinking of others’ interests, too, picture taking and sharing is well established and (mostly) well accepted; even expected. A camera can give added purpose to the visit in the course of composing the light or the geometry that stands out and attracting one’s interest and attention. But drifting around the temple grounds to record beautiful subjects and scenes to share, or for one’s own sense of collection, can mediate the awareness and connection to the place and time, too. In other words, strangely, visiting a place with camera big or small, the device encourages closely noticing light, texture, line or other source of significance. It can amplify the looking and recording experience, but at the same time this same activity can separate the person from seeing the whole. It can keep the person from reflecting on the meaning of the place to the local people and to those who were part of the place in historical times. Pictures make fragments that are exquisite and sometimes evocative. Nevertheless, pictures are still fragmentary.
In this snapshot a few non-Japanese approach some of the religious buildings at the outskirts of the main temple. They seem curious, but they frame their photos not based on the local knowledge or scholarly expertise or practitioner understanding. The same motivation for picture-taking at this tourist attraction is likely also true of many visitors who are Japanese and even for the residents of the village where the temple has been in operation since the 1200s. In these examples, the camera carrying experience focuses attention and it triggers a visual response to sites of wonder or beauty or meaning that may be fleeting or personal or maybe professional. What the picture reveals is an abstract composition, a subject (in its context or isolated as a fragment) and the photographer’s framing choice, shooting habit or intention. In this way a visitor with camera sees both more and less than a person with no such urge to document or collect.
After seeing, capturing, and maybe sharing with others individually or broadcast on social media, what is it then that happens to the prized or casual snapshot? What might a photograph’s lifecycle look like? The eye notices. The photographer freezes the moment. Later in post-processing the picture could be improved by straightening, cropping, adjusting exposure and shadows, color temperature, and so on. But soon there are new compositions that attract one’s attention or present a technical or artistic challenge. As a result, the earlier images are stranded on SD card, phone, or online. Adding keywords or other search tags may lead future viewers to find the picture. Contributing to an archive (e.g. Archive.org) may give future ways of viewing, too. And people alive today other than the photographer and future generations, too, may study the image with other purposes and knowledge. In the end though, what began as a frozen moment ends as a viewing moment, as well, taking up very little space or attention as it melds into the mass of prior fragments of beauty or attention or meaning.
Thus, snapping pictures does illuminate the experience at the time and for a little while later. At the same time the photographic experience also can blind the person to the full splendor of person, place, or thing. Once made, though, the photograph can have a lifecycle of its own: at first digitally flying far and wide, or maybe left for another day, but then forgotten. Later, the picture could be discovered by others online by searches or by accident. So beyond the initial excitement of seeing a potential picture, then releasing the shutter and soon after sharing, a few pictures will live on for others to see later or much, much later. Such is the life of a photograph.
