[yumiris]

When possible, I first visit the place without a camera and strive to immerse completely. I then visit it again and take pictures. Not using the camera the first time - and having to think about how I'll take the pictures when revisiting - provides a lot of opportunity to appreciate and reflect on the sight in question. With places I can only visit once, I try to take as little pictures as possible, and instead embrace living in the moment to let my mind and heart preserve the memories.

I've learnt this one from my other half: she rarely takes pictures because focusing on pictures detracts from actually living in the place. She takes pictures as a sort of "index" for where we've been: a quick of us together with the location in the background, maybe one or two snaps of beautiful sights, and so on. It's pretty rudimentary, because ultimately, the vivid memories are preserved within us rather than the photographs.

Though I won't deny that the fear of not capturing everything can get to me at times, thus I end up taking one too many snaps. I think that's a fear many people deal with when they take an inexplicable amount of photographs of the same thing!

[glitchcrab]

This is the thing though; the human brain is fallible and those vivid memories are not preserved because they change over time.

[yumiris]

Absolutely, it's sadly a compromise. Although there's one thing that's much harder to forget and won't be prone to distortion: how we felt!

If we immerse and let our feelings of wonder and awe prevail, it will be difficult to forget such feelings even if the visual memories change over time.