Is Digital Photography Ruining Your Travel Experience?

As a group, we travellers have become obsessed with taking photos when we're away, with recording every moment on film. It used to be that the Japanese were made fun of for their compulsion to take photos, but the rest of us have caught up.

Digital photography has a lot to answer, its ease and relative cheapness opening up the camera obsession to the wider populace. You don't have to be an expert anymore, or even an enthusiast, you just need a spare hundred bucks or so and a big memory card.
And there are so many ways to share the results. You don't have to persuade friends to come over to your house for a slide night in order to bore them senseless with your holiday snaps. All you have to do now is post the pics on Facebook and wait for the likes to pile in. Or upload them to Flickr and have them judged. Or alter them with Instagram and bomb your friends' feeds. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand boasts.

I'm as guilty of this obsession as anyone, although I have the excuse that it's my job. I not-so-secretly enjoy the Instagram posts, but I'm forced through work to have a DSLR always close at hand when I'm on the road, ready to raise to my face and click whenever anything interesting happens.

What's the problem? Well, it's a bit like spending your whole holiday posting Facebook status updates about what a great time you're having – instead of going out and actually having that great time.

In the rush to frame and document every important moment, modern-day travellers are missing those moments while their faces are glued to the camera. Ever been to a concert and had your view blocked by about a thousand raised hands holding iPhones and thought, "Why don't these people just enjoy it now instead of recording it for later?" Then you know what I mean.
Not everyone takes photos to show off, I'm sure. There are plenty who do it for their own enjoyment, to keep a personal record of a good time had. It's the new-age way of keeping a travel diary.
But I've caught myself plenty of times not looking at a monument or landscape as a thing of beauty, but as something that needs to be framed properly in the ideal light. I'm weighing up the best angle to snap it from instead of just looking at it, taking it in, appreciating it.

This is part of an article written by Ben Groundwater from Fairfax

Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/travel/blogs/the-backpacker/how-digital-photography-is-ruining-travelling-20130730-2qvv2.html#ixzz2ab0zs3I7