Technology means we can document all those special moments in our lives and share our experience with the world. But travelling through your phone's screen means you miss the little things and dilute the adventure.
Graffiti from the Palestinian resistance near the Wailing Wall, Jerusalem
I get it. You're at the Taj Mahal or Petra, you want to take a photo of the Treasury and more importantly, you want to prove you were actually there, and it's not a stock photo. So you switch your phone to selfie mode and start snapping away.
While you're pouting and taking numerous photos from different angels until you get one that's both cool and pretty - after all, how else do you expect to get all those likes, shares and follows - you've missed a the Jordanian Guards marching through or a Bedouin camel rider juggling with fire. You missed the American tourists who ask they didn't build it nearer an airport. You miss a gaggle of children running through sprinklers. You miss that all the staff have left to answer the call to prayer.
Going to landmarks is great. You don't get how beautiful the Taj Mahal is until you see it close up. You don't get the magnificence of Petra until you've walked through it. And you don't get the tranquility of Angkor Wat until you've visited. But how many people have done this and how many photos of the same temple are in people's private collection?
I don't want to see Machu Pechu, I want to experience it. If I want pictures of it, I can Google. I want to see pictures of the stuff that these photographers missed, like the market stalls, characters or graffiti.
It's a countries nuances that make it what it is, not it's landmarks - but we're so self obsessed, we miss all this stuff. We don't talk to people who can tell us about what it's like to live there or even the design of something simple, like drains.
I like documenting my life. I think it'll help when I'm older tell the story of me. I still mourn the loss of my camera when I went travelling around East Asia, as I've lost all those arty shots I took of the things around Angkor Wat, Tiananmen Square and the Reclining Buddha. And all the characters I met along the way.
However, while capturing these blink-and-miss-it moments, don't forget to live them too.
