I hate selfies, so whenever I'm on vacation I just take pictures of my surroundings but never with me in it. Once, my cousin wanted to see my vacation pics, so I showed them to him. He then asked why I'm not in any of them. When I said I didn't think it was necessary, his genuine confused reply was, "But how do people know you were really there, then?"

It's really insane out there.

[–] thehatfox@lemmy.world 27 points 6 months ago

This is how I take pictures, I take pictures of the things I am seeing so I can look back at those moments later. I don’t experience life in third person, observing myself from overhead like a video game, so why would I want myself in the pictures?

[–] olutukko@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago

the neat part is they don't. unless you tell them about the trip. I too only take pictures of my surroundings, with my camera app, for myself, without the intend of sharing more than maybe one of them. unless I happend to put something on a family group chat or something

[–] Pulptastic@midwest.social 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I have a counterpoint. I used to be the same way but then I realized I just had a bunch of amateur photos of places where professional photos were readily available, basically wasted effort. So now I try to capture the people I'm with in the photos as a way to remember our trip together. This is also great fodder to make photo books for the grandmas.

[–] SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago

Same for me. I took multiple trips as a young adult where I just took scenery photos. Twenty years later I really regretted not including myself and family in those photos. Think of yourself in the future and skip sharing them online.

[–] papaya@possumpat.io 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I'm the same when I'm going on a vacation with my parents! I want to have as much memories captured with them as possible... But it's only when I'm with them lol. I usually go to vacations solo, and the pictures without me is still memories to me--even if it's a bad picture and not professional quality, it's still something I saw and experienced myself. Like maybe my sunset picture I took is crooked or too dark etc, but when I see it I remember the moment I was there; it captured exact hue of the sky that I saw, the birds that I was watching earlier, the clouds that I thought looked like a Pokemon and made me smile. The better pictures that other people took do not have that, so for me personally, it's not a wasted effort.

The other day I was looking at my solo vacation pictures from 10, 15 years ago without me in them, and the memories are still with me.

Anyway, I think that although we take them differently, we both agree that vacation pictures should be for our memories, and not for "showing other people that we were REALLY there" (as my cousin said, haha...)

[–] Liz@midwest.social 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

One time I found this old home movie my grandma made of their visit to the Grand Canyon back in the 50s. She’s filming the scenery and a couple times you can barely see my dad and uncles run by. We’re watching this in the mid ’00s – 50 years later, near the end of her life. She goes “Why didn’t I point the camera at them? I don’t care about the Grand Canyon."

That's when I quit taking pictures without people in them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1hpb5j/comment/cawuf50/