Shortest Post Ever

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Mike
(Thanks to Chris Vickery)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kevin Schoenmakers: "'Some of my best adventures are built around trying to photograph something.' Personally, that is so true. I've recently moved to Shanghai, and I make an effort to go explore for the purpose of making photos on a weekly basis, if not more often. Without photography I wouldn't know my new city half as well."

terry: "Very good, I actually did lol. thanks for sharing."

Bob: "WOW, the xkcd cartoon even before I got to my bookmark. I have a set of blogs bookmarked that I step down through every morning. The xkcd cartoon is two bookmarks below The Online Photographer."

Comments

[Christer]

My amazon.de bookmark is the link provided by you and your reference shows up in the URL when I click on it. I live in France six months of the year and when I buy from amazon.fr, I click on my amazon.de bookmark and when the page comes up, I just change the "de" into"fr". Your reference is then shown on the french page too. I hope I have outsmarted the system and that you benefit from it.

[Dennis Ng]

Could it be shorter I stuggle a bit e.g. can it just said "here" and no need of "click". Surprise no non-4 letter words to replace "here" e.g. "this" is also a 4 letter word etc.

***

For the argument in th link, it is always a bit an issue of any photographer.

Lately I was on bird watching and found it very very hard not to do bird photography. I still do not get the honour code i.e. I have watched that bird and you trust me if I said I did see it. I have to show the bird (and even a video of the song of the bird) to say that I have seen it. Of course, I knew I did but somehow my experience has to be objective so that is is shareable and become of other people's experience. Just talk about an experience as a communicative device is not enough. And not talk about it ...

Perhaps not a Zen master to live just this moment (or as Ctein has argued like Hume, there might not be another moment next). May be just an ordinary guy need to share.

[Jack Nelson]

Mike,

Have you seen The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (the new version)? It's a good movie but there's one scene where Mitty has finally found the almost mythical photographer Sean O'Connell who has trekked to Afghanistan to get pictures of a snow tiger. He has his camera set up, the tiger comes but he doesn't shoot. "Sometimes I don't shoot" he says, "if it's personal... just for me" (or something like that; I'm quoting from memory)

[Terry Letton]

Exactly. MYOB. Needs to be more common

[Ken Rahaim]

Apropos:

From "The New Criterion". . . (subscription required)

The Overexposed Museum
by Eric Gibson (Leisure & Arts Features Editor of The Wall Street Journal)

"Camera technology and the iPhone are changing the museum experience"

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-overexposed-museum-7757

[Jim Oleachea]

Most excellent, Dude…….

[Gato]

Nice.

I have come to a point where I prefer to put down the camera and savor the moment, but in many ways working with a camera taught me to be a better observer and to better appreciate what is before me. To live more in the moment. So maybe all those years of doing photography have brought me to a point where I don't need the camera so much anymore.

[Bryce Lee]

There are days I am not too sure about
your methodology. Must be the cold weather
which freezes the brain...

[Another Phil]

Saw this and thought of you...
http://sensuouscurmudgeon.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/curmudgeonite.jpg

from Sensuous Curmudgeon and Tomato Addict.

[Chuck Holst]

I saw that cartoon just before I turned to TOP, and it resonated strongly with me. I take a lot of photos and always have since high school. For me they are a kind of visual diary. Far from distracting me from the scene, they help me to focus on it, figuratively as well as literally, which can imbed it more deeply in my memory so that I am more, not less, likely to remember it in future. Likewise, looking through old photos, good, bad, and indifferent, revives the past, reminding me of things forgotten, and showing me things I may never have noticed the first time around. Most experiences are fleeting; photos, comparatively, are forever.

[Tommy Williams]

I had just seen that XKCD post and was coming over here to try to figure out how to point it out to you. Glad to see you not only knew about it already but have shared it with everyone.

[James Gaston]

Thanks, I needed that!

I've read too many articles of late decrying the exponential growth of digital photography.

[Jim Bullard]

I'd seen that one Mike. I even saved a copy. :-)

[Eric Rose]

You could have made it even shorter by just linking the word "click". We all trust you and I'm sure your click through rate would have been just as good.

[Michael Perini]

For Gato
Dorothea Lange: "A camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera'
Michael

[JohnMFlores]

Love it. Happens to me from time to time on the road...

http://www.roadrunner.travel/2013/10/15/just-ride/

[hugh crawford]

People are really bad at seeing what's in front of them, eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate for example. I have always used photography as a way to see things that I would not otherwise notice.

In the late 70s I always tried to limit myself to no more than 288 personal photos a day because that was as much film as I could develop at a time. I always wanted to try taking a picture of every meal I ate as a project but I never remembered to until after breakfast.

A couple of years ago I was carrying around a camera set up to take a picture every 10 seconds or so but it was too much work to look at that many photos, sort of like Samuel Beckett's take on this -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krapp's_Last_Tape

or maybe film is closer ( I have not ever been able to view this movie , if anyone has a source I'd like to see it )
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060410/

[Roberto]

Great XKCD post. Though, I've seen some extreme examples. There is a famous spot in Rome where you have a wonderful vision of the St Peters' dome trough a keyhole, framed by a tunnel of trees. Google "st. peter's through a keyhole" for pictures.
Well, I saw Japanese tourists putting directly a P&S camera to the hole and snapping, without bothering to look through. Not my business indeed, if this is the way they enjoy it, but extreme indeed.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I would probably like Randall Munroe (who writes and draws XKCD, in case there's still somebody who doesn't know), he seems to be annoyed by a lot of the same things that annoy me :-).

[Tim]

Randall does recursive arguments so well.

'Tis entertaining, thinking of potential captions for the shot taken in the last frame.