Yeah, a bad analogy would be throwing a party vs being invited. All in all it feels very weird how this 'data' era is twisting our conception of 'existing'. It seems like a gigantic ball of noise, no signal. Too much content of lowered moments. Very unsettling. Slightly digressing, I'm also having a non-digital reaction. I used to love the unaltered quality of digital data versus fragile analogical mediums. But now I'm far more interested by used objects. We used to see them as flawed or tainted, and with the experience of perfect digital duplicates, I sense a loss of memory (no pun intended). Our perfect bits have no past, no history. An old photo I sense the effect of time. A book with notes on the margin. What was negative has positive value now. And reflecting on how I felt reassured about digital before, I'd say it was an immature fear, a paranoid need to keep things "perfect". Which goes back to what the previous post said, instead of stressing over saving something, enjoy it fully and let it live or die.

I wish you'd say a little more but thank you anyway I forgot that book existed, now I have a stronger desire to read it.

I don't know if this is up your alley, but have you looked into the aesthetic called 'wabi-sabi'?

Never heard the term. Very interesting, except that now I think what we call imperfection is just lack of depth in perception from us, kinda like old music theory that rejected some harmonies, with time you grow to see beauty even in the 'weird and broken'. Thanks for the link.

I think a better idea would be to just limit yourself to a small number of photos. It used to be that you were physically limited to 24 or 48 photos. Limit yourself to that. You'll appreciate having some photos of your vacation without spending the entire time documenting.

I do photos sometimes, I just stopped focusing (pun half-intended) on doing it instead of enjoying the experience. If moment presents itself, I'd snap a pic, but if I didn't or even if I forgot the camera completely - I don't regard it as a problem anymore. It's more about the mindset than the quantity - when I realized my mindset if more about the photos than about myself enjoying the experience, I had to change it. I just resolved not to give too much attention to it, and so far it's working fine.

I switched to taking fewer photos. Now I try to get enough shots to prompt a recollection of what I actually experienced.

Exceptions would be things such as certain architecture or scenery, the details of which I'd never recall well.