Ever had a photo pop up in your Instagram feed and thought, Hey, I’ve seen that before? Someone standing in the same spot, looking at that same mountain in the background? Or, say, cheesing in front of the same national park sign?
Most of us probably have. But I hadn’t thought much of it until I saw an article recently about a camera designed to keep the photographer from doing exactly that—taking the same clichéd photo other people often take. It made me think: Is there something inherently wrong with posing for a photo in the very spot where dozens of others do, too?
The camera in the story, actually a conceptual design, uses GPS to pinpoint its location and then scans for online photos that have been geotagged nearby. If it finds too many images taken there, it shuts down. So no more hero shots on top of Zion National Park’s Angels Landing. Or selfies at Yosemite’s Glacier Point. If you want a photographic souvenir of your trip, you’ll have to find someplace else, where fewer people shoot. It might be a helpful tool, if your main concern is to take an original photo and get away from crowds. But what if we want that one photo? The one everyone else is taking, too? Is that bad?
A recent article by Grayson Schaffer in Outside magazine pointed out that Instagram culture has changed the way people plan their travels. Instead of thinking about experiences they want to have, he wrote, they’re thinking of the photos they want to post. Schaffer interviewed one photographer based in Banff, Alberta, who said the vast majority of the photos he sees posted from that area are taken from the same 10 spots. So if the purpose of a trip is to find solitude or to have a unique experience, it’s probably smart to avoid those places where the cliché-blocking camera would shut down.
I’m certainly guilty of planning trips a certain way because I’ve seen a compelling photo on Instagram. Instead of flipping through the pages of guidebooks at the library, now most of us scroll through the continuous stream of photos on our phones. So, the more people visit a certain place or take a photo of a certain thing, the higher the odds it will wind up in our feed and tempt us to go see the place for ourselves. Of course, this has spawned environmental concerns about highly trafficked viewpoints—all of our tiny actions stack up to make detrimental changes. Leave No Trace ethics then become more necessary than ever.
Maybe we should take those people’s snapshots for what they are—records of their own experience—and use them as simply a starting point for our own adventures. Instead of making our trip goal the snapshot of that one specific mountain, maybe we should make it about jumping, blazing our own trails.
To truly, deeply enjoy most experiences, whether it’s standing on a mountaintop or just sipping a perfectly brewed coffee, a certain mindfulness is required. That might mean setting the camera down altogether. There may be nothing wrong with working hard to get a special photo in an awesome place, but it’s a tragedy if that comes at the expense of actually soaking in what’s around us. There’s a special, leaping joy that comes from seeing a place in real life that you’ve only ever seen in photos or dreamed about. It’s important to fully enjoy that place in real life instead of being so caught up in capturing it on camera that we might as well just be looking at it on our phone back home.
But some places are simply so magnificent that they, rightfully, end up on postcards and countless people’s bucket lists and Instagram photos. I’d seen photos from the top of Angels Landing in Zion National Park before—and odds are you have too. It’s famous for a reason. And crowded for a reason. The massive topography, the way the light graduates from the depths of the canyon to the bright sky above and the artistically streaked stone walls all add up to make Angels Landing a place that moves most people. It moves me every time I make that hike, even though I’ve shared it with dozens of other people more than once. And every time I go, I’m still going to take a photo—the same photo everyone else is. Because I can’t not try to capture the feeling of that place. And as long as we’re still able to breathe deeply and be truly thankful for the moment as we experience it, what could it hurt to take a quick snapshot, even if everyone else is shooting it, too?