Photography and memory

[Nh3]

Every picture that we take, does it get saved in our memory right at that moment?

... And if it does then is it possible to overload one's memory when taking a lot of pictures in a short time?

 

[kshapero]

Could please be more specific as to what you are talking about. What camera are you referring to for starters.

 

[Keith]

Could please be more specific as to what you are talking about. What camera are you referring to for starters.

They say that you never actually forget anything ... it's there in that huge database we call the brain.

Recalling it can be a problem ... every year I get older I notice this! 😛

 

[xayraa33]

When one is in the act of drowning, ones whole life flashes vividly and rapidly in front of ones mind eye .
from very present to the distant past.

 

[JeffGreene]

When one is in the act of drowning, ones whole life flashes vividly and rapidly in front of ones mind eye .
from very present to the distant past.

Or so they say! When I found myself in one such circumstance years ago, all I could think of was whether I'd made the most recent insurance payment. 😀

 

[M. Valdemar]

I think that photography provides one with evidence of a prior existence, distinct from the present moment.

Without immutable images, it would be hard to fix anything in your memory too long with any degree of certainty. People die, disappear, memories fade, events become hazy, you physically change, you forget or even doubt past "realities".

Certain personal photos become iconic in your mind, and once the image is "fixed" in a photograph, you remember vividly the image rather than the "real event".

It's something to cling to in the maelstrom.

 

[lZr]

....And some day, it will be pleasant to use the brain search facilities to pop the pic you are sure you have it....

 

[xayraa33]

Or so they say!

I am speaking from a personal experience.

 

[Roger Hicks]

A sideways take on the same question:

If the picture and the memory don't match, it is the picture that is at fault. You should be a good enough photographer to bend the photographic process to what you (think you) see. This was the subject of one of my AP back page columns a while ago.

I'm not that good yet but I am working on it.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[Windscale]

I arranged most of my holiday shots chronologically in albums. By looking at an album I can re-live the holiday. The pics will help memory recall. And this is real fun. Also proof that I am getting old but not yet becoming senile!

 

[BillP]

Sometimes I take photos to remember. Sometimes I take photos to create. But the creative image is as much a record shot as the aide memoire, by dint of the fact that I was "f8 and there".

Remember, though, that wetware - our brains - is imprecise. You could argue that the memory is perfect, but recall is imperfect, but the net result is the same. A photograph "re-baselines" our memory, as do other aides-memoire - a souvenir, a sound, a smell or a taste.

All the senses have an impact on memory, and often the strongest memories are those that are triggered by multiple stimuli.

Regards,

Bill

 

[alan davus]

In august 1976 I left Australia to travel overland to Europe eventually arriving in London exactly a year to the day after leaving. Photography in those days was a Yashica TL Electro SLR, a 50 1.9 Yashinon lens and half a rucksack of K64. Every time a film was finished it was sent back to Oz registered post for developing to be forwarded to a relative's address in Adelaide (and amazingly every film survived the vagaries of the Asian postal system). At the end of 1980 I finally returned home to a mass of little yellow boxes whose contents I had never seen. Surprisingly there were few photos I couldn't remember taking and most it was as if I had taken them only a few days before.

 

[kuzano]

I don't think this is true.....

I don't think this is true.....

When one is in the act of drowning, ones whole life flashes vividly and rapidly in front of ones mind eye .
from very present to the distant past.

Some years ago I was practicing stall recovery in a Cessna 152 (supposedly unspinnable). I was about 3500 feet above ground level and put the plane in a stall. The left wing dropped and it went into a spin. I urgently worked on all the steps I had learned for spin recovery... VERY Urgently.

I NEVER saw any moments of my life pass before my eyes... NOT ONE. All I recall seeing was sagebrush and desert sand spinning past the cockpit window... nothing else.

Nothing was working, so I pulled my feet from the rudder pedals and my hands from the wheel. My hands almost automatically clasped themselves in the manner of prayer before my eyes. While looking past my hands at the spinning tableau below, the Cessna, on it's own, without my assistance, leveled out about 800 feet off the ground.

Needless to say, I simply wanted to pull over, step out and have a cigarette. However, I had long before given up smoking and I still had to fly the plane back to the airport, to do some housekeeping in my boxers.

I will be the first to tell anyone that given an almost assured and iminent death sentence, you will recall nothing of your life before the incident. That spinning drop of over 2700 feet should have given me plenty of time to recapture my life, and it did not!

And the answer to the original POST is Yes and No, depending on what you are asking about. Particulars please.

 

[wontonny]

They say that you never actually forget anything ... it's there in that huge database we call the brain.

Recalling it can be a problem ... every year I get older I notice this! 😛

Everyone has photographic memory....some people just run out of developer 😛.

I remember Henri Cartier Bresson looking at his pictures and saying something like, "Ah, I remember now! It all rushes back to me in such clarity". You can have photos that can bring back memories perfectly, or you can just have pictures that you never remember taking or why you took the picture in the first place... that is, if you're shooting a moderate amount of pictures.

 

[xayraa33]

Some years ago I was practicing stall recovery in a Cessna 152 (supposedly unspinnable). I was about 3500 feet above ground level and put the plane in a stall. The left wing dropped and it went into a spin. I urgently worked on all the steps I had learned for spin recovery... VERY Urgently.

I NEVER saw any moments of my life pass before my eyes... NOT ONE. All I recall seeing was sagebrush and desert sand spinning past the cockpit window... nothing else.

Nothing was working, so I pulled my feet from the rudder pedals and my hands from the wheel. My hands almost automatically clasped themselves in the manner of prayer before my eyes. While looking past my hands at the spinning tableau below, the Cessna, on it's own, without my assistance, leveled out about 800 feet off the ground.

Needless to say, I simply wanted to pull over, step out and have a cigarette. However, I had long before given up smoking and I still had to fly the plane back to the airport, to do some housekeeping in my boxers.

I will be the first to tell anyone that given an almost assured and iminent death sentence, you will recall nothing of your life before the incident. That spinning drop of over 2700 feet should have given me plenty of time to recapture my life, and it did not!

And the answer to the original POST is Yes and No, depending on what you are asking about. Particulars please.

your personal case did not involve drowning.

I cannot answer as to why this phenomena happens, in the case of near drowning it could be to the lack of oxygen going to the brain.

 

[Nh3]

Very interesting replies.

The reason I posted this question without elaboration was to see if others grasp what I was trying to say and to my amazement, nearly all of the replies seemed to know exactly what i was trying to say.

I shoot a lot, sometimes a 1000+ pictures in a whole days shooting and when I check them for editing I remember exactly every shot and the moment that I took them... When I realize that suddenly I feel a sort of exhaustion - the sort that one feels when forced to memories something... Not only that I remember the picture but why I took it and how I took it etc...

A sideways take on the same question:

If the picture and the memory don't match, it is the picture that is at fault. You should be a good enough photographer to bend the photographic process to what you (think you) see. This was the subject of one of my AP back page columns a while ago.

I'm not that good yet but I am working on it.

Cheers,

Roger

Very interesting. Is your article about this approach available so I can read it?

Thanks,

 

[laughingbuddha]

What I Remember of What Shoot

What I Remember of What Shoot

I shoot a lot, sometimes a 1000+ pictures in a whole days shooting and when I check them for editing I remember exactly every shot and the moment that I took them... When I realize that suddenly I feel a sort of exhaustion - the sort that one feels when forced to memories something... Not only that I remember the picture but why I took it and how I took it etc...

I find it remarkable that you remember so much about what you've shot you while shooting film. I shoot a lot on the street and I remember all of what I was trying to capture but I'm never sure if I got it because each moment is changing and I have no control over it. Sometimes I get exactly what I was after but more often I am lucky when I can happily preside over wonderful surprises. Generally I am chasing after ordered chaos, split seconds that say something unspeakable and more often than not I am late, the moment I was after has passed so I am really impressed that you know exactly what's on the rolls you've shot. How does that happen? And believe me this is a serious question on my part.

 

[Doug]

I often take a walk around town with a camera, and upon returning I make notes of what I've shot that time in my roll database. Typically some photos are recorded in detail, others more vaguely, and then later when scanning the negs I'll see shots I did not record but at that later moment do remember fully. Memory can be odd. Maybe I'm overloaded easily, or maybe my memory just has a high failure rate.

I don't shoot in high volume, though; I'll rarely shoot more than half a roll on one of my walks, and my record "catch" for one day while on vacation is around 160 exposures.

 

[mhv]

Every picture that we take, does it get saved in our memory right at that moment?

... And if it does then is it possible to overload one's memory when taking a lot of pictures in a short time?

Allow me to plug once more my meandering thoughts on the subject of our internal memory buffer and photography:
http://creativeimagemaker.co.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=49

I find that 35mm is just big enough to overflow my buffer.

 

[M. Valdemar]

When I think of something or someone in my distant past, I always picture the PHOTOGRAPH of the scene rather than my memory of the actual event.

Once immortalized and fixed as an image, it's seared into the memory.