Through the camera lens

Resisting the urge to snap

Back in July this year, my partner and I spent some days ensconced in a mountain resort in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The government was paying 40% toward our hotel cost,¹ so we splashed out on a really, really nice room. In fact, we got ourselves a whole hut hidden in the hill side, with floor-to-ceiling windows boasting a panoramic view of the valley and mountains beyond, titled the “Love Nest.”²

When I saw our room, I was floored—this was the nicest hotel room I’d ever been in. And as I lowered myself into the outdoor bathtub, the first thing we did after being shown to our room, I made a promise to myself: I will be fully present. No Instagram for the next four days.

I wanted to fully immerse myself in my beautiful surroundings, not look at it through a lens as I snapped one picture after another for Instagram. I wanted to be there and enjoy it without having to tell the world “I’m here.” It shouldn’t be that difficult, I thought. Four days without Instagram in this nature haven? Entirely doable.

I was confident.

The urge to snap

I made it through that afternoon, and evening, without a hitch. See? Easy, I smugly told myself as I drifted off to sleep that night.

I woke up early the next morning. With my partner still sleeping soundly in bed, I made myself a cup of coffee and went to sit at the office desk. Not a minute after I sat down, that familiar thought dropped into my mind: wouldn’t it be nice to snap a photo right now? Look at this magnificent view. I just want to capture this moment, of me sitting here at this desk, drinking my weak morning coffee and enjoying the scenery.

Maybe just a quick story, I suggested to myself. No, a grid post, so I can write a longer description and turn it into value-adding content for my followers. Fuck, I said no Instagram. It’s only the next morning and I’m already considering giving up?

After a few minutes of intense mental debate, I settled for snapping the photo, and saving it for a newsletter post (ta-da!) where I would have the requisite word count to do my dilemma justice.

Here it is, the moment of intense internal debate amidst peaceful greenery, captured for posterity.

In the end, I didn’t keep my promise to myself. I lasted a couple of days, then succumbed to a story and a grid post of a book I was reading, ironically one titled Stolen Focus which dedicates not a small chunk to the modern distractions of social media.³

I’m not proud that I broke my solemn promise. Those Instagram story and post were entirely unnecessary, a vain attempt to show off, to shout to the world “Look where I am! Isn’t this place cool or what!?” under the guise of a book recommendation.

But I’m glad I snapped that picture at the office desk that morning. Because I now have a photo to remember that instant, how I felt, what I thought. What might have been a fleeting moment now forever lives in my gallery.⁴

Mounting a resistance

I appreciate what photos can do for us, how they remind us of our past—of good times and bad. But for the most part, I still try to avoid taking them.⁵ I think they distract us from the moment. The camera lens prevents us from being in touch with reality, from being fully present.

This not-taking-a-picture business is not easy, especially since I’m trying to grow my Instagram audience and always looking for “content” that I can post. I’d be somewhere, or see something, and immediately that same old thought would drop into my head: that’s a nice frame, I should snap this, hmm what caption would I put?

What I do is keep to a general rule of “not while in company.” If I’m having a dinner or a drink with someone, I won’t take out my phone to snap the food/drink/surrounding no matter how content-worthy it is. I consider it a distraction from the person in front of me, a small act of disrespect that I’m loath to commit.

When I’m alone though, it’s a different matter. I’ll often sit down at a café planning to read, then end up simply taking pictures of the book cover on my Kindle, my coffee, the café.⁶ I'll tell myself, it’s for my brand-building, or it's for sending to my parents. It’s a veritable struggle to actually put the phone away and just be.

But I’m trying.

What do you think?

The struggle with my phone camera is real and constant. What about you?

What’s your relationship with your phone camera?

Do you feel the urge to snap as intensely as I do? Does your camera eat first? Or is it an afterthought and you go whole days without taking a single photo? Send a reply, leave a comment, share this with someone who likes taking pictures and might, just might be a photo-taking addict.

Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,

Val

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Photo by Eaters Collective on Unsplash

1. A scheme for Thai citizens to boost domestic tourism during Covid, and an extremely popular one.

2. The room was dotted with cheeky paintings of people having sex in various positions, which we found quite cute—Love’s Nest indeed.

3. A great book by the way. I’d highly recommend it.

4. A writer friend wrote an excellent post about photo-taking as a memory-making event. As you’ll see, her perspective is different from mine, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading her take.

5. Note the use of “I try” here, one of my three pet peeves from this post.

6. Exhibit A.