The difference between looking at something and actually seeing it

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It’s a thought that crosses my mind every time I see a group of tourists stopping in their tracks in the middle of town – does anyone actually look at anything anymore instead of simply photographing it and then never looking at it again?

Go into any Cathedral or historical edifice in the world and all you see are visitors with cameras and iPhones at the ready to snap everything that comes into sight – instead of actually looking at the attraction, letting it wash over you and recording the experience in your mind’s eye instead.

Take a quiet moment for reflection, read the brochure; stop, stand and look all around you – and then if you want to capture the moment for posterity, take out your camera and try to capture what you’ve felt in a visual format.

Then the photograph might mean something to you when you find it fifteen years later.

But most of the time it looks like a competition to see who can snap the subject the most, and from as many angles as possible before swiftly moving on to the next target and repeating the process over and over again.

It’s the same thing at concerts – as soon as the band’s big song comes on, it’s camera phones out, recording devices on and phone calls made to people who couldn’t be bothered to come to the gig so they can experience said big hit in glorious fuzziness.

If they wanted to hear the singer, they’d have bought tickets. Even if they wanted to hear the song, they’d play it on their home stereo rather than down a phone connection from a hall or a tent.

It wasn’t always that way, probably because we didn’t have too many cameras and no mobile phones – but it doesn’t mean we don’t have memories of cities visited, gigs witnessed, experiences enjoyed.

And even decades later, you can see them in your mind’s eye – whereas if you’d taken a photograph, you’d have been looking through a lens and now, given that your chances of finding said photograph are virtually nil, you’d remember little or nothing of it at all.

Sometimes it’s enough to enjoy the moment yourself and remember it in your own way, without a photographic or audio crutch to lean on.

It also makes the moment better for others; their view of the stage isn’t blocked by your camera held over your head, or their path isn’t blocked by forty tourists taking a photograph of a window.

There’s nothing wrong with capturing the moment – but first you should experience that moment, rather than approaching every Church like an adrenalin-fuelled Marine who will shoot anything on sight and ask questions as to what they shot much later.

What’s the point of coming home from your holidays with hundreds of digital images of things you cannot, for the life of you, remember?

We don’t want to be spoilsports or dissuade visitors from capturing the west’s beauty for posterity – but at least look at it first to see if you actually like it….and then shoot away to your heart’s content or at least until there’s no memory left on your phone.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.