Are photos really photos if they’re just on a phone?

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The awful truth is that I have more photos of the last six months of my life than I have of the first 50 years – and yet I haven’t a single pic at all.

Because the only camera I have is on my phone, so it’s always there to capture the moment. But there the image remains for the rest of time; we don’t print pix off our phones.

Photographs used to be rare and wonderful; seldom taken and all the more cherished as a result.

For those of us of a certain age, the early years are documented in terms of the standard posed family shot for the First Communion and again for Confirmation.

There’s the odd rare holiday shot – rare, to reflect the paucity of holidays in the first place – and the even less frequent posed family shot.

But for all of those years, there’s nothing at all of a night out or a casual gathering, because it seems back then nobody ever remembered to take a camera with them.

Which, given some of the places we ended up on those bacchanalian nights, might actually be more of a mixed blessing than a source of regret.

Furthermore, there’s not a single picture of my dinner or even one of a pint settling in its glass in case I ever forget what good Guinness looks like.

I never tried to hold a camera in front of myself to take my own picture – even if the Eiffel Tower was directly behind me.

We got by with just remembering where we were – and if we couldn’t remember, then we might just have been better off being allowed to forget.

Now, however, nowhere is blind to the lens of a camera – and the irony is that we’ve never had fewer photos.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.