(chill music) - So turns out taking photos
changes your memory.
So I took photos on all of these to find out.
What is this, 2004?
Thank you to Hello Fresh for sponsoring
a portion of this video.
I consider myself someone who takes a lot of photos.
I'm afraid that I'm gonna miss a moment
so I always come prepared in social situations.
In fact, I carry around
like seven different cameras when I go out.
If you think that this is a ridiculous problem,
you're right, but something interesting that I read
is that taking photos
might actually be affecting our memories
and that's because every time we recall a memory,
we might actually be changing the way we remember.
And photos are a big part of how we remember things.
So how are photos affecting my memories?
And I wonder if different cameras
affect my memory differently.
So to figure it out, I'm gonna try five different cameras
to see if the process of taking photos
and how the photos feel affect how I remember my life.
So for day one, I borrowed Sabrina's Polaroid camera.
Pretty simple to use it.
You point it at a thing and you take a picture.
The catch, it costs $4 or a latte.
A word of caution when checking the flash,
don't point it up at the sky and up at your nose,
otherwise you'll end up with a photo like this.
Anyways, I went out for dinner
and I lugged this gigantic camera with me.
Can't even hold this properly,
but the photo was taken (laughing) and we got coffees.
Unsurprisingly, taking photos
helps with our visual memories,
but taking photos can also take away
from other sensory experiences,
like the smell of a place, the sound of a place,
or even the feel of a place.
With Polaroids, I found myself focusing more
on trying to get a cool shot
rather than actually experiencing the moment.
I got cool pictures, I guess.
I feel like I need to mention here
that Sabrina loves Polaroids. (notification chiming)
I for one could live without it.
I could live without it.
But anyways, onto the next day.
All right, it's iPhone day.
Let's go take some photos while we make lunch
and thank the sponsor of our video while doing it.
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Truthfully, the highlight of my day was making my lunch.
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I think it's safe to say that our phones are always with us,
and if there's something that we wanna remember,
we know that we can grab our phones,
quickly snap a couple pics and put it back in our pockets.
Now it's easy to take a lot of photos because we can,
but it can kind of hijack our experience
of taking in a memorable moment.
Let me explain, in the same way that we write down
phone numbers rather than committing them to memory,
in a sense, we offload the work of remembering a moment
to our phones to access later.
So if we aren't mindful of how and when we take photos,
we might be relying on our devices
to do the remembering for us,
which isn't very good for forming memories.
All right, now with mirrorless cameras.
Mirrorless cameras have a bit of a complexity
when it comes to the documenting process.
There's all these fancy buttons
and dials and switches that you can use
to make sure that you can get the perfect shot
and then you edit them.
I got this really cool opportunity
to go to a music festival to be a production assistant.
I took a lot of photos on this camera.
I took a lot because I could.
It's so easy in the moment to just get lost
in shooting pictures, but you will have to set
the time aside later to sift through the bad ones
so you can find the good.
Now, taking the time to edit these is part of the process,
and when selecting these pictures,
I had the intent of sharing them with other people.
But what was interesting was looking at these photos,
it didn't feel like I was reliving my own memories at all.
But I kind of felt like I was experiencing my life
in the third person, which is weird when you think about it
because it's your life.
I think that something happens when you take a photo
with the intention of sharing it online
because you're no longer experiencing that photo
in the first person.
You're kind of experiencing the photo
as someone else looking at the photo.
And that kind of reminded me of something
that Taha said to me in an earlier conversation
that we'd had.
- Melissa, it just sounds, when you were like,
"Oh yeah, I have so many cameras
and I carry all of them around to document my life."
I'm like, is there any life happening?
(Melissa laughing) You sound like
a loser with cameras.
- And if you wanna watch that full video
where the three of us talk about how we document our lives-
(camera whirring)
- There's film in it?
- You can watch it on Patreon.
So now we're onto film cameras.
Like a Polaroid, you've got a limited number of shots,
but in order to see these photos,
you gotta get them developed
'cause they're stuck in this little canister.
I'm gonna meet Sabrina for coffee today
so we can have a co-working session.
- [Sabrina] Look how embarrassing she is.
She's doing this in public?
- [Melissa] I've had a roll of film in here
for about two months now
and I've just been savoring taking photos on this camera.
But for this video, we are just gonna finish out
this roll of film.
- [Sabrina] Such a creepy shot.
- Once I finished my roll, I went to a local lab in Toronto
to get my photos developed.
So when I sat down to look at these, I was kind of in awe
at what moments this camera had captured
in the past couple of months.
I remember these moments so vividly
and it turns out there's a reason for that.
So the process of film photography
accidentally reinforces this concept
called spaced repetition,
which is actually a studying technique.
So when you take a photo,
it's the first exposure to the memory.
It's the moment that it happens.
And then as time goes on and the memory starts to fade
into the distant past, it risks being forgotten.
However, in a certain distance of time,
whether it's a couple of days, couple weeks, or months
and you look at these photos,
suddenly these memories get brought back to the surface.
And because you haven't seen these photos in so long,
by looking at them after a period of time,
your memory of them kind of strengthens.
Now this is really cool and all, however,
this is quite an expensive hobby.
So what are our other options?
So that brings me to the final camera of this week.
And that is digital point and shoot cameras.
This is a little pink Cyber-shot camera.
It's a Sony camera.
I used this when I was in elementary school
and it still works.
(camera whirring) Kind of.
Gonna go grab food, I think, with my mom and my sister
and I'm gonna go meet some friends later
and I got this thing to capture the evening
so catch you later.
They have a very specific aesthetic to these images.
They're like a little bit ugly, but in a cute kind of way.
And now because it's old and a little bit janky,
and by janky I just mean very slow.
You take less photos and it kind of forces the idea
of space repetition.
You can kind of get the benefits of a film camera
with a point and shoot,
if you don't look at your photos right away.
I think that our memories and the photos
that we take of our life are a lot more important
than the resolution of these images.
And while sometimes that can be important,
I'm really just glad that I have something
that documented that time.
If you're wondering why I'm holding a plant,
it is not because I'm trying to hide a microphone.
Partially yes, but taking photos is one way
that we can remember our lives.
But remembering our lives isn't easy.
It's hard to find this optimal balance
between a technology aided memory
versus our own internal memory.
And when it comes to documenting our lives,
we have so many options to choose from.
And ideally, we're trying to find an instrument
that'll allow us to document a moment
without it interfering with our ability
to experience that moment
and also leave us with something tangible
that we can look back on.
With each of the cameras that I used,
they all had different benefits.
For me, using a Polaroid, I got really cool pictures,
but it was just heavy to carry around, expensive to use,
and honestly just not practical for every single day.
The mirrorless camera, you know you're getting
an epic photo, but it is timely to go through them all
to get the final image.
My phone was easiest to use, but the photos just felt cheap.
The experience of using a film camera
and the images themselves were really beautiful,
but it's just really expensive.
And with the point and shoot camera,
not the greatest resolution, but it was so much fun to use.
So I can say that there's no best camera
to remember your life.
It's really about finding what fits your needs
and photos are just one way that we can remember our lives.
And when we choose to document a moment,
I think I'm reminding myself on this journey
to take in every other part of that experience,
whether that be the smell of a place,
really appreciating the people that I'm with,
and how I feel 'cause a photo can't always capture that.
So back to cameras, when I go out,
I still wanna take pictures,
but I'm not gonna bring all seven of them.
I'm just gonna be more thoughtful of why
I wanna bring a camera and just be mindful.
But anyways, I hope that you liked this video
and that you learned something
'cause I feel really vulnerable
making this video and thinking to myself
that maybe this should have just stayed in my diary
and not gone on the internet, too late now.