Open Camera philosophy, or how to get more souvenirs

pictures

Creative Commons: https://j.mp/1831uv3

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I like photos more than anything else: they give me the opportunity to freeze in time a special moment. For me, they are even better than videos in many cases as they let you associate a special moment, that you define, to a specific picture: even if it's not what exactly happen at this time as unlike a video, it's still your memory, and it's fascinating to see how people interpreted differently the same event.

Everywhere I go, I'm bringing either my DSLR, or a compact camera to immortalize those moments: dinner with friends, visiting a new city, birthday party, walking in the forest... Every situation is worth taking the time to take pictures, but I have a real problem with this: being the person who took the photos means that you won't be on any photos. I remedy to this situation by doing what I call, the open camera philosophy. No it's not about using a camera with Open Source software, but more about crowd sourcing my photos.

Let's say that we are at a dinner together with many other friends. Instead of being the only one who will take pictures, I put my camera in the middle of the table, and tell people that I would like them to use it to take any pictures they want. Of course, I'll take a lot of them too, but I'm offering my camera to whoever would like to be on the other side of it. It served me well as when people understand the principle, they are taking pictures, and that give me the opportunity to finally be on them too. It's also totally worth it as it's not just about me being on some pictures: having someone else taking picture is opening the door to a new perspective of the event, and to different creativity aspects. As I said, we may not see the same thing, may not immortalize the same moment, may think differently, and may not have the identicle way of taking a picture. At the end, I'm getting way more photos, and that mean, a lot more souvenirs!

I highly encourage to do like me, and adopt the Open Camera philosophy: I'm sure you won't regret it...