Japan in a Thousand Pictures

When on trips, with family and friends, or during other noteworthy events, I usually either a) don't have my camera with me or b) have my camera and forget to take it out and don't take any pictures. Pulling out the camera always seemed kind of unnatural to me, like it's drawing attention to the good time everyone is having and saying "Hey everyone, let's all take ourselves out of this special moment and pose artificially for the camera!" I feel that it's disruptive.

Which would be fine, except I love having pictures, and feel crushing remorse when a good time has ended and there is nothing to show for it except our stupid memories. Thank goodness Paul is there with his Digital Rebel to exhaustively document everything and put it on Facebook, or I don't know what I would do.

These are the things I considered when watching the beautiful film below. Eric Testroete edited together all of the photos he took on a vacation to Japan with his girlfriend, set them to the persistent beat of an LCD Soundsystem song, and voila. It's totally hypnotic, and you feel that you are right there with them in the park feeding deer and eating potato pancakes at restaurants. I really enjoyed watching it and thought it was lovely, but throughout I just kept thinking about how many pictures they must have taken of every single thing that they did. Can you really be in the moment and experiencing life fully if you are behind a camera and capturing everything at the same time? I know that this is the way we live now, but there is a curmudgeonly side to me that thinks that something important is lost in all that documentation.

This is Japan! from Eric Testroete on Vimeo.

Via Urlesque