[vachina]

Some questions I ask myself before I take the camera out:

1. Is it a picture someone else would’ve already taken?

2. Does it have our faces in it?

3. Will it have historical significance in 10 years time?

If all of it answers no, I rest easy knowing I missed nothing.

[socalgal2]

I have at least 140k digital photos (almost 30 years of digital camera / camera phone usage). They are all uploaded into google photos, not for archiving, just to have easy access. I look up and reference stuff all the time and while doing so I see lots of things that trigger memories. Many of those are "a picture someone else would’ve already taken" like famous places but it doesn't matter. If they weren't in my photo collection then they wouldn't be there to bring back memories. Further, they are my picture of the time/place/date/weather when I was there. Sure I look up pictures of the Grand Canyon or Times Square or the London Eye or the Eiffel Tower, those are not as powerful for my own use as the pictures I took.

Speaking of which, I'd get even more use of these pictures if Google photo search was better. I'm looking forward to when some photo service is 1000x better for searching. Right now if I put I can put in "dog" and see that it's listing too many photos with no dog or pictures with "hot-dog". If I enter "black dog" it shows pictures with black color somewhere in the picture, like a shadow, and a dog. If I enter "dog with black hair" it says no results, even though I pictures of black labs. I tried "dog on beach". I know I have some. "dog in pool" got two results by I know a very dear picture of my younger sister with our dog in the pool and it didn't find it.

Looking forward to LLM/AI enhanced photo search so I can just say "show me photos of my sister in the pool with our dog" or "show me pictures of my trip to paris with my mom". As it, I have to find these through other means (remembeing the date, etc...)

[zirgs]

The guy who took that photo of Barbra Streisand's house had no idea how significant that photo would become later.

[WWLink]

What if the picture does have historical significance but you don't know it yet?

[sensanaty]

> 3. Will it have historical significance in 10 years time?

I mean, almost by definition there's basically no way of knowing this right?

A picture of a mountainside with nothing interesting going on other than nature might not be significant in 10 years, or maybe the entire landscape has transformed into something completely different.

I grew up in Bali, Indonesia. In the 90s, where I lived was nothing but lush jungle and beaches, with a few very small houses here and there dotting things. By the 2000s we had actual asphalt roads, and by the 2010s we had a full on highway on the south of the island. The stretch of land where I grew up is quite literally incomparable to what it looked like before despite my house not changing much, and it took roughly 10 years to reach that state. I would've loved if I had a camera back then to record the changes as they were happening, because you'd be amazed how quickly things become significant in some way, not to mention any potential memories of a place you think of fondly!

[throwawaybob420]

lol. This is such an odd way of living your life. I mean, historical significance? How would you even know that?

And why should it matter if someone else took a similar photo? it’s your photo you’re taking it like come on man am I taking crazy pills over here?