I do something similar, but for me, it happened my accident. Every time I hear a new song, I keep on listening to the same song until I get bored or a better songs comes my way. Essentially, what it has done is divided my life into various songs that I have loved at different points of my life. When I listen to the same song again in the future, I remember exactly what I was going through at that point of time in my life. This is truly magical for me.
Fancy seeing you here! It's people like you and Johnny that drive the narrative of living an intentional life. Thank you both for your work, you're single-handedly changing lives out here.
A journal is a great thing to have while travelling. While the photos can capture the visual information, a journal can contain what you were feeling and thinking. The best part is that writing in your journal can be done at the end of the day when the memory is still fresh such that it doesn't interfere with the moment.
I did this during my first trip to Japan and I'm so glad I wrote about it! I wrote a lot about little, innocent moments that happened during my trip for a whole month, and reading now about them feels like time hasn't passed, I can remember things easily ☺ Also, recording sounds (I'm not talking about recording videos) is a very good option too, just sounds of the environment 🌱 And if you are comfortable drawing you can sketch little details during a trip or even during your regular days. It is also a nice way to practice drawing and relax for a few minutes ✏
@@forget.me.not.I did journal writing for years but it requires lot of discipline, sometimes I don't want to recall a bad event from the day just to write in the journal...
When I was a teenager I had a sudden realization that over the years I had thrown away all of my childhood toys and possessions in a slow process of attrition, and with them, I realized I had disposed of countless memories, feelings, and passions I had as a kid and will probably never recall again. Since that day I have been a keen photographer, and and terrified of losing my library of pictures.
I feel like the reason I started photography (well a part of the reason I started photography) is because I guess in a way I wanted to recreate feelings I have or had for nostalgic memories I do remember but couldn't quite know how to tell people with the right words of why or how I feel those memories are so important for me. So I feel like through pictures I would be able to express the feelings I have for nostalgic moments in life I cant tell other people otherwise through words. And I hope through those pictures they'll in a way no exactly how I feel and the cunfusion I felt of why I couldn't tell them with words. But that's just one reason I want to do photography. There's many other reasons but this is probably the core important meaning behind it. But then again I don't take pictures as often as I would like to because I'm afraid of what other people would think which causes me to not take pictures. Then I feel terrible because I cant express my self or do what I love because the fear of others judging me. Also I tend to over think the reason why I take a picture. Most of the time I take the picture for how it looks rather than finding a meaning or story behind it, which will cause the photo to not be special. I don't know what I'm talking about, maybe I'm blabing nonsense. ok anyways sorry for the long message
I spent TWO MONTHS on deleting all the unnecessary photos. My family would say to me that it would be better if I did something more important. But deleting photos is greatly important to me! I always feel that when you sort out your photos, you sort out your memories as well! I had about 20K PHOTOS, but now I have only 2K and that’s enough for me. I feel SO GOOD while scrolling my photos now and sparking ONLY MEMORABLE photos in my head! Thank you so much for this video! Finally I found someone who mentions the importance of all this!
I’m postponing this for way too long that I like to admit (probably the same time since this video was released) I have now 30k photos, and want to get down to 5k. Just got a big hard drive, plan on putting everything there, and just keep the best of the day on the phone. Will take a few weeks to get it done
@@miguelosterroht hey! ~ you don't have to stress that much, like just do it as a little routine, to "lose some free time". I want to start organizing my photos, on the premise that I will relive some memories down the road. :) Thanks! have a good day!
andorfb I guess maybe because he’s so busy as a student that he doesn’t get to go out and have social engagements. Although I like your suggestion, I’m going to go check the app out now
@@mattparker3068 Don't know if it's the best app, It's just the one that I'm using. I get it now :) Here's how I understood it (through my personal experience): he HAS actual social interaction, but the memories are "buried" in an overwhelming number of photos for university. This is what used to happen to me. I went out a lot, but only took tens of pictures, that got lost in the gallery among hundreds of pictures of documents, whiteboards etc.
Yess, my friends always love my pictures I take with my camera even if they are annoyed in the moment when I have to ask to stop our hike for the one hundredth time😂
Same here x1000. In fact I have stopped taking pictures lately because my flame got extinguished by the things said to me by the people closest to me. :((((( A little bit of me died that day.
@@floroberg No, it was more that I thought I was performing service by taking great pictures and later sharing them but I learned my efforts weren't appreciated in the least.
One thing I started doing in 2016 was to actually record videos of what I wanted to remember (like the ocean waves and the breeze on a sunset when in Monaco) and talk about what I was feeling in that video. It's crazy how good it felt to relive those memories years later.
Well I'll be honest - At the beginning of the video I was like: a) Does this actually work? b) Even if it does I don't take a lot of photos that "document" my life sooo ... it is probably not for me. Well, here I am after about one and a half hours going through my photos and deleting something around 6300 of them (granted its from like 2012 to today). The best part is that when I was going through them I was happy, laughing and even shedding a few genuine tears from the happy memories that it mead "re-live". It's not often that I comment on a RUclips video but I wanted to share my thoughts & experience. Thank you for making this video and helping me "re-live" parts of my life
@@sashwatpandey4673 Well yes, that's true but only partially. I go through my photos from time to time and the experience isn't the same - it's at a "That was fun/cool" level. I can 100% agree that when I was doing that for the first time the experience was amazing, then it sort of was less exciting/ emotional - I guess the "Law of diminy returns" applys to everything.
concerning the last step (reliving memories and the emotions that come with them): i started doing something over four years ago (when i was 15) with no intention of it ever becoming this big of a part in my life. but it did. and it's really simple but also really effective. i just make a lil 1-4 minute video every month containing photos and videos of that month, played over a song that i listened to alot or that was important to me because i listened to it in an especially memorable moment. now, i have this library of videos for every month, and every time i watch one i feel the way i felt in that time. i also got better in memorizing random events because i can always be like oh, that one time we drove around at 1am? that was in february '16, because i rewatch the videos so often that i know it's in there. (sorry for my english, isn't my first language)
Great idea. And your English is fantastic! It sounds really natural, with the only mistakes being a few wrong prepositions (which is fine, native speakers make those mistakes too) and not capitalizing the first words of sentences (please at least always capitalize the pronoun "I", it's not "i"). But really, there is no reason to include that little message at the end in future comments, and no reason to be insecure about your English!
@@bennemann wow thanks for the honest and nice reply, you rarely see that on youtube! i'm trying to get to a place where i'm happy with my english, but especially when writing about more complicated things like the videos, i sometimes get confused, but i'm happy it isn't that noticable!
very good thinking. in my case, i only upload photos relevant recently on a private album using facebook so thats really cool. where do u store the videos after?
We tend to forget something because our brains need to delete unimportant information. Johnny, one of the techniques I always do when I try something new is listening to a new song. For example, add a new song to your playlist when you travel next time. Listen to it in the car, before sleep, during the day. 5-15 times a day. Then, when you're leaving the place, stop the song, remove it from your playlist. Wait for some time, then listen to that song again. It will bring all emotions and feeling you were experiencing at that moment.
I had that unintentionally when being in France. Every time I was in the car, there was playing bad habits from Ed Sheeran. Every time I later heard that song, I was thrown back to my France exchange.
This!! I listened to an album for the first time while I was driving in the middle of nowhere on a California road with the windows down and the smell of oranges completely filled the car. It was amazing. I forgot about the album for months, but now whenever I listen to that memory comes back to me very clearly and it's one of my all time favorite albums.
One of my absolute favourite things to do is a "one second of the day" where i document every day of the year in one second increments. As a photographer myself, I find this the best way for me. When I see a snippet of the day, I'm most likely to remember it, without losing all feeling through taking 200 photos. Watching it at the end of the year is SO rewarding and those 6 minute videos are something I'm going to have for the rest of my life. You also get so many mundane experiences as I'm not going on trips every day, and little things like doing homework or watching the rain are so much more meaningful and memorable :)
dont take photos for you, take them for those you leave behind bc inevitably you will forget them all. I take many pics and double back them up every decade for my kids, not me but for the pics i really want to make sure they stay, i put in a photo album bc it only takes a solar flare to lose everything digital which is also inevitable. Most likely my grand kids will have a few photo albums that i bothered to print, alot more than the 1 photo album of my childhood. Print the pics you really want to last imo, keep the rest. Sort of the same as this video but smarter i think
I did it when i was in highschool because there was an app but then lost all progress when switching phones, so i stopped. I think im going to pick it up again
@@emmamakesbadart omg, thats awful, just take normal selfies in the same spot every day. Now you just need to figure out how to put it into reverse bc i think it would suck to watch yourself age in front of your eyes, then look into a mirror :(
@@ZelenoJabko eh it's still useful ways of thinking to be reminded of. I hope people don't take it as science although I'm sure some do due in part to its presentation
Record people's VOICE. I'd love to hear my grandparents voices. A video or audio recording of them talking or reading a book would be so precious to me
i'm only 16 and i've been worrying about forgetting my life for years. i became a pic/video hoarder in a desperate attempt to have things documented as much as possible, even if they're really bad pic/vids. this video scares me, but i'm definitely going to try this right now and keep it in mind for the future. thank you :)
Ughh I wish I did exactly this starting at 16, I'm now almost 18 and the last two years have been the best of my life but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna forget them 😥 I already did forget some things :/ Anyways I didn't take almost any photos mostly because I hate taking photos and I just like living in the moment and feeling the moment without being bothered with photos or the future. But now that I watched this video and realized how important it is to document my life and I regret not having documented anything I'm gonna start making an effort to take more photos (and then delete most of them lol)
I’ve always been shy and scared of cameras and years later when I looked into all the photos of our dance groups, parties, exchange programs ... I wasn’t there. It really makes you feel special looking back to your memories
True. I think have just a handful of footage of myself when I was in highschool. But I think the reason also ties to the same reason why I didn't take selfies at that time 😅
I’m super forgetful. It’s pretty bad. My sister passed away a year ago. I loved photography and she loved modeling. I shot a lot of photos and videos of her. I captured so many sweet moments that I had completely forgotten about and only remembered when I was looking through my old pics and videos of her. I’m so glad I was able to capture those moments.
This is why I journal. Those little random memories you don't even know you want to remember. The dates he mentions had me running through Journals getting as close as I could to the dates. I need to write more this was fun!!!
Do you have like a daily schedule for journaling? I can't get into regular schedule for the life of me, tried doing it in the morning, in the evening before bedtime, during the day, etc. Maybe journaling is just not for me, but I love the concept so much, so I'm not giving up
@@prettylittleravenna No I keep my journal on my computer desk were I spend most of my time or on the night stand by my bed. It makes remembering to write a little easier.
I kept journals for short periods of my life and I love reading them, it's such a crazy glimpse into my past mind which no amount of photos could bring back. It's just way too hard for me to keep it up for any significant amount of time :(
As a photographer during this quarantine I started doing film photography. The message i want to share with others is that when you have only 36 or less shots you start thinking what do you actually want to memorize in the form of a photo. As you said Johnny less photos mean more time to put down the camera and just enjoy and live the moment. PS : I haven't developed the films i shot since June so memories are waiting//
I really like Johnny Harris’ approach and I do something similar! I’d suggest getting an external hard drive dedicated to just saving photos for memories. Categorize each photo by month and year and then you’ll have a vast array of years organized by folders refined by months where you can click into that month folder from June 2006 (for example), and you can relieve that month! That way you don’t need to rely on cloud services and you can access your photos via usb. The only thing with this method is that you have to be diligent in uploading your photos to the hard drive through your computer every so often.
LastMinuteFilms oh, I already do that! I haven’t reached the point where I need to go external, however. I have a 500GB ssd I use as a boot drive. I keep important games and programs on it as well, with 100gb left over for copying new photos/videos. When I’m done editing them, I’ll move them over to my 2TB hard drive, where I’ve been collecting and organizing pictures by year/month/day/phone:camera since 2016. But still, if the drive failed and Photos died, well that’d be 💀
vivek K WD is also kinda bad, idk. LaCiE or whatever their name is makes rugged ones. Hard drives cannot handle lots of movement, so an external SSD is faster and safer tbh. But I’ll keep using my internal drive as long as possible, because 120MBps is not a thing USB can do. Forgot to mention, I also have a 1TB drive for any programs that don’t fit on my SSD. So the ssd is for fast and important stuff, the 1TB drive is for less important stuff, and the 2TB drive is for photos and videos.
Since our brains evolved to remember the bad stuff easier than the good stuff (to avoid it/learn/survive) I really really appreciate having photos of the good times. Great video!! I appreciate this in depth explanation of experiences around taking photos!!
This video really hit home to me... I took videos of my grandfather and I playing cards last year before he passed away. Nothing special, just something he and I would do after school when I was a kid and when I was home on break from college. After he passed away last year I look back on those videos as the most important possession in the world to me. I strive to find the line between capturing my life and being in the moment, but as someone who is very paranoid about forgetting things I skew towards documentation. I think photos and videos ground me to where I was and what I was feeling. Most people will never see them. I’m making a little time capsule for nobody, but it’s a bit of comfort in the void. I hope one day to show my own grandkids HD footage of their great great grandfather so they can maybe see how special he was. Where words fail me videos can do justice. Thank you for another great video Johnny, this is making me pretty emotional at the office.
Same here, especially since my SD card is getting corrupt, losing alot of files and ive basically had it for years... Lost so many photos and videos already
I think the best part about what you guys do on this platform, is having a way to look back. Years from now when the kids are 20, you'll have all of this to look back at. Great reason to keep it up💖 Love.
I'm somehow "afraid" to delete photos. Even the nonsense. Also, I feel like the decision to press that button gives somehow value to the photo. And then, never again a photo will be taken from the exact same point in universe. Impossible to truly repeat, information lost. Something that I find no value in the moment of deleting *might* eventually be of value to the future me. Hope it doesn't sound creepy :)) Still, I believe that intentionally not taking pictures is a really good way to better associate true memories to the ones you took. Used to abuse that shutter button because of the fear of forgetting. And as you said, that made me create no memory to forget in the first place. PS: I love the idea that what seems mundane right now to me would've been so fascinating to my past self. Your video just made me realize that the reverse is also true.
For me, I revisit pictures not to delete them, rather to manually move them from the mobile Camera folder into my harddisk, where I have to sort them by year & month. (Though of course I still delete some blurry & bad pics and all that - prioritizing memory space) Sure there's the metadata, but when there's a looooong list of them? It takes a long-ass time to find a picture, makes the folder load a long time, and it just looks messy & unpleasant to experience.
I can relate to that on a deep level. Looks like I'm not the only one in fear of loosing my memories and deleting photos. But I think I'm unintentionally takes less pictures now than before, because I'm taking my time to actually enjoy the moment ✌️
I began doing this process two years ago without even having seen this video. I can't describe how amazing it has been. You are so right, limiting photos of each event DOES enhance the memory-making of that event!
I can honestly say Johnny Harris is my favorite RUclipsr/Filmmaker now. It was Casey Neistat back in the day but after now Johnny's on that threshold alone. Iz is also such a sweetheart and funny in matching Johnny's somewhat opposite personality calmer characteristics. Fav couple on RUclips hands down. Just chill personalities and the best storytellers
I couldn't help but notice how our memories resemble the universe - with the most memorable moments being the brightest stars... knowing that there is more out there in the void, even if we are unable to "see" it in this very moment. Great video Johnny!
my only way of recollecting events is actually by listening to music. as a big introvert, i’ve been listening to music basically 8hrs a day for almost 10 years. as i associate songs with memories, everytime i here some music, rythme or melody, it makes me relieve the said memorie. the only problem with that, is that i may forget the name of the song ..
This needs to be talked about much more! Coming from a Filipino family, all of my relatives are all so caught up with taking pictures and videos of every second of an event or an experience, but sometimes I fear that they're living through the pictures and not the actual moment. Like you said, the visuals are there, but the immersive experience (the feelings and senses) of that present moment is lost
I've been writing down everyday in my journal. It only takes 5 minutes. Then you read your journal on your birthday; wishing to do better in the coming year.
@@waluigi3515 Hi, you can try this journal www.amazon.co.uk/One-Line-Day-Five-Memory/dp/0811870197 basically you write very short paragraph about every day... i do it 3 yrs already and I always remember situations and feeling I think i lost already... :)
Extremely powerful pitch, that’s exactly what I needed to hear in my life. I kind of lost the motivation for photography because of over abusing it. Thank you so much for this. Hit straight into the heart
As someone who has been recording my life since 1980, I identify with this. I was surprised you didn’t mention journaling. That would be a way to record smells and feelings. I’ve journaled in many ways but for a few years now I’ve been committed to journaling digitally, using the Day One app. You can even add audio to entries, so sometimes I do that to record the ambience. I also caption my photos in Lightroom. By the way, I have tens of thousands of photos in LR and it’s running fine; not bogged down. And because I caption them, I can search and find what I’m looking for pretty efficiently.
How magic is that, I've been searched for weeks for an app that can do exact the same thing like Day One, but I couldn't because didn't know the keyword. Thank you so much!
I actually use Snapchat for this. It is pretty convenient to take pics and save them to memories without having to post it. They also have throwbacks for each day so everyday I am reminded on where I was or what I did or what I wished 1 or 2 years ago, which is pretty great and motivating sometimes
Snapchat photo quality is terrible, though. I stopped using it to take and save photos when I realized that pressing the download button on a Snapchat photo is the equivalent quality of taking a screenshot of your screen. Tremendous loss of quality and no meta data.
Little advice for everybody reading this : I took photos both with Snapchat and stock photo app and I am so disappointed that I took a lot with snapchat ! When I wanted to export all my photos from every devices to one unique Photos album (the Apple software), I couldn't have the chronological order for the snapchat pictures. Indeed, saving pictures into Memories then exporting them make it loose their medatas, including picture capture date. that's a shame and I won't take photo with this app anymore because I add to put back dates on hundreds of photos
there're some gorgeous moments i've experienced in my life and even if i brought a phone by, i just don't want to take pictures, instead i stand there and use all my senses like, to feel. i wished the time was stopped for a few minutes just to let me sit on the rock and look very very far away across the foggy landscape. personally i don't regret that much. there's plenty of things out there could "spark joy" and be a string that connects me with nostalgia.
Truong Laivan honestly I do the same. I sit/stand and put myself into a full awareness of what’s going on, and it helps me to remember how I was feeling and what it smelt like. It’s truly crazy and amazing!
I really don't follow travellers. But this man! Your videos. Your basic tips. Everything about this channel and you, is just so peaceful to watch. Keep up the good work. Keep inspiring ♥️
In 2013, I backpacked through France, Andorra, and Spain with a friend, and decided to do a travel sketchbook. I didn't set enough time aside, so the drawings are all rushed, and incomplete. But I learned a lot, and I love looking back on them. More importantly, a new habit was formed. I highly recommend drawing and journaling as a way to connect with the moment. It's had arguably the largest impact on how I see the world and my place in it.
You were coming from a place where you took too many photos. (I've always thought that taking photos made you forget about experiences, or made you not fully experience moments in the first place.) So, I'm coming from a place where I take almost NO photos so that I can fully immerse myself and appreciate the moments for what they are. I figured if I don't remember something, then it must not have been influential to me or my life. However, there are usually some exceptions for things that I might have really liked but forgot about. So, I made it a point to only take pictures of things that I know that I absolutely never want to forget. Yet, I still feel like I haven't taken enough pictures in my life, to fill the gaps in between my favorite memories. So I want to thank you for providing a well thought out process for documenting life in a way that still remains mostly non-obtrusive to the immersive live-life-in-the-moment experience. I'll try to go at my own pace in taking more photos. Cheers!
You had me locked in a trance from the moment you have started reliving memories with the car breaking down till the end. Thank you for this video. This is a problem I recognized but had no way of addressing. You did that for me. Thank you
I'm one of those peoples that feel upset when I realize that our memories fade. I wish I could take candid pictures in special moments all the time because I don't ever want to forget about that feeling - ever.
I believe that we are made to forget our memories. We aren't designed to remember every good memory in our lives! If it was efficient and good for us to remember so much then our brains would have evolved to do so. I think this kind of obsession with recording every good moment is setting ourselves up for mental health problems and anxiety - living in the past good memories rather than focusing on the present moment. Just my two pence. Peace
Leon Nixon But our Brains remember nearly everything, you just need a trigger for your faded memories to come back. So with your logic we are meant to remember nearly every thing, because our brains do.
Plus it's a way for the brain to detoxify all the "useless" data in order to keep working and be able to absorb new information. It would keep only the highlight and important things. It's like an organic computer with limited hard drive space lol.
I'd like to add that communal storytelling is sort of a lost art but such a beautiful idea for how to remember small and big events with loved ones. And yes, you can create a story on your own, documenting the details and themes of your own life by immersing yourself in your experiences and "romanticizing" them as if you're in a book or a movie, maybe with the aid of a journal. But if you have the opportunity and people willing, try sparking conversations about that trip you had or that time you got caught in the rain. Combined with Johnny's point that you need to slow down each moment and let your brain absorb the senses, I think your memory will be more powerful than you think.
Robin Williams - "If I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling". From Good Will Hunting.
I needed this. Thank you. For some time I become really afraid of not having beautiful moments of my life captured on the photos, and I also had a some sort of anxious perfectionism that led to tons of pictures in my gallery, many of them looking just similar. But recently I started to understand that the most important thing is to actually feel these moments. To be present as fully as possible. With no camera. And several pictures are really enough.
I was cleaning out my Dad’s home after he passed away a few years back, mind you I was 49 at the time, and I found stack and stacks of old photos taken between my age of 13-18. Most of them were taken inside my home with my brothers, step Mom, step sister, old friends, and other relatives (Dad was in very few). Anyway for the next 3-4 hours of going through the stack just looking to simply figure out which ones I would keep, it turned into the most unexpected, unplanned, bizarre, enjoyable, thought provoking journey backwards I’ve ever taken. Through many of them I was able to tap into how I was feeling and thinking the moment it was taken. Truly amazing and it came out of nowhere.
For me "being in the moment" happens before the pictures. Taking pictures happens kind of in between - after i've gone through my first "impression" of the moment, i seal that in with some photos - but sandwich it into a bit more of absorbing of this experience- whether I'm alone or not. Good times to take a photo: when you're turning a corner, walking out of a building, returning to the same spot after covering a place that "loops". Make the most out of the moments you won't remember and take your photos then. But always let your brain take it all in.
I used to think about this on the bus and I realized that I didn’t remember the day before on the bus. I even decided in my mind I would remember that day, but I didn’t really, all of the times I rode the bus blended together so I have no idea if it was dark and cold, or sunny and warm. I rode the bus twice a day for years. It’s kinda sad.
2:44 In April of 2011, Indian International Cricket team lifted the World Cup after 28 years and I vividly remember the whole day of 2 nd April 2011........... Still gives me goosebumps when I recall it.
I'm using this technique since 2009 and deleted a lot of photos and I also started creating folders for every year. Everytime I open these and look through the photos I am able to reactivate memories and tell little stories which happened around that moment I took the photo.. now I know it was a great idea! Definitely keeping up with it. The idea in the comments about creating little videos for every month with a song you heard at that time is also amazing.
I started being more deliberate about keeping a journal and never miss a day, just answering 'so how was your day?'. But with just 1 year, there's so much written in it that I wonder if I'll ever read it? No one can possibly go back and read all that so what's the point anyway? The more data there is the less useful it becomes. Maybe I need to konmari that too.
@@JustAnotherMe digitising them can save a lot of space. Also, handwriting recognition is bound to improve in the future so they can become searchable and editable at some point.
Very interesting, instead of photos, I use music to remember. When I’m in the moment , I listen to a song, after five years when I listen to the song again, I completely immerse into my memory. Edit : and yes I take photos and mostly use film but as clear as you stated 14:50 it’s more of experiencing the moment than capturing it
Actually, this such a good concept, at the end though when he was talking about what photos sparked joy all I could think of was Marie Kondo cleaning out closets and saying to only keep the clothes that sparked joy.
Writing and meditation is another way I remember life. I recently came across some previous writings of a time my wife and I were in living in california. I had written out what we had done on that very normal and uneventful day and it was amazing to walk through that time again.
I started taking my film camera to some trips and vacations I went on and it was one of the best decision I've ever made. Having to cut down the number of photos you take leaves so much more room for memories
I am normally a person that isn't very emotional, however your videos have something ebout them, especially the soundtrack, that makes me feel kinda melancholic/sad in a good way. Maybe that sounds kinda weird/silly, but what I want to say is that your videos are very special! Please never stop making mezmerizing content!
Great video. I've also noticed that drawing the moment while you're in it is a great way to really notice things you otherwise wouldn't (though this is clearly just visual and can be impractical). Another way to remember more is through knowledge. If you're walking through the forest, you might notice (and remember) the colour of the trees, the fresh air etc. But if you know the type of bird that's sitting on a branch, maybe you'll actually notice the nuance of yellow in its feathers or the way it sings. Memory and how you experience things are connected to knowledge, so learning more means experiencing more
My way of taking photos changed over the past years. After I got my first DSLR, I took pictures of almost everything that seemed to be worth shooting while travelling. On one journey through Europe I visited 9 major cities, ending up with thousands of photos and not remembering the moments anymore. In my memory sometimes I do not even know what was where, and I even completely forgot about one city. Now I take my camera with me everytime I go out, but look at the things first, and only take a picture when it is really really worth it. Sometimes my gf orders me to take a photo for her, because she wants to remember something I do not care for. This way I might only shoot 1 or 2 pictures a day on a journey, but these shots mean something to me.
One of the more interesting videos I've ever watched on RUclips. (and I watch a lot). I'm going to start implementing this approach immediately. Thank you.
Johnny, thank you so much for this video. I’ve always had a similar thought, that I have too many photos, and most of them I don’t really want to remember. When I’m traveling, I always try to balance taking pictures with enjoying and feeling the present moment. One thing I would is to add captions to some pictures, so you can have a kind of a journal along with your memories. At least in iOS you can add it already.
My third time watching this. I've been taking less photos ever since. It is just so great that I came across this video two years ago and followed the advice. My camera roll used to be a bunch of mess that I never wanted to click into. Now it has become a great place for me to re-live all my memories! UPDATE: 5 years later, I am still using this method and yes it works!
I'm so happy I'm not alone. I've been doing literally the EXACT same thing for 2 or 3 years now with the plus of going through old albums where I did not have a cellphone or camera and scanning those to cover the other years. I'm only 17 so I have pictures from the day I was born to present day and explore my memory ever so often with my family in the living room. Hope to continue like this for the rest of my life [Tons of backups of all sorts just in case] and when I'm 80+ go back over all of them and die peacefully - leaving my life digitalized for my family... BTW I also do this through songs. On spotify, I have a private playlist called brain hits: It's those songs you temporarily love and get stuck in your head so you listen to them all the time for a week up to a month. Now I have 50+ in there and always listen to them when I'm on a plane or travelling and they evoke an amazing memory of a certain time in my life as my tastes develop.
I love the way you tell stories. You are such a great storyteller. You have the power to say specifically what the viewers want to listen. It is a very interesting video that I really like.
I think another helpful thing is to write down stuff in some kind of journal, that is just filled with things that you just really really need and really really want to remember. Same as here, a little later when you've filled the journal, you can go through it and erase the stuff that isn't necessary to remember or rewrite it in a new journal, summarizing the experience in three sentences at most.
Yeah man that was really interesting. I too have been downsizing my huge bulk of photos, often of the same thing. I remember when you had to get your photos developed and so each photo was precious. Photos capture our lives and hence they are our histories. I appreciate your advice on organizing photos for a more memorable life.
i love this! i have an app called 1 Second Everyday, and it captures both big and little moments in a second-long clip that truly sparks so many memories when i watch them back during a monthly recap. i definitely need to work on deleting photos and allow myself to relieve memories in a decluttered space, and this video for sure is motivating!
Lately I've been obsessed with organizing and watched a lot of Marie Kondo, then realizing her "spark joy" concept works amazing too on decluttering the brain and other intangible parts of life. It's cool to see you brought the concept up indirectly 😁
I am so glad I stumbled on this video. Forgetting memories has been troubling me for quite some time, and issues with lightroom you mentioned, after losing a ton of metadata, just made me quit cataloging photos. Thank you for reigniting this idea, it was very moving to watch the insights into your process.
dude onestly i think you have become one of the gratest creators on the plattform, every video is a huge joy to watch and helpes me a lot in hard times butt also when im happy.
On iPhone there's an album for all screenshots. Then I guess you only keep the ones that spark memories or joy. I think Google Photos has something like that too. I'm saving some screenshots from the "draw something" game. Good memories when I see those drawings :)
Sometimes the RUclips algorithm recommends the strangest videos. Other times - like with this video - the algorithm just knocks it out of the park. Thanks so much for this!
I remember watching this video years ago and I just wanted to leave a quick thanks, because if nothing else, I've kept the habit of going through and deleting my photos after events or such, to only keep a few really good ones. So thank you for the inspiration on that! And also I was looking for motivation to go through all of the stuff I haven't deleted and get rid of a lot of it, which is why I came back here. So, like, your video about remembering things was remembered!
Thank you SO much for this. I feel like I always kind of knew some of these concepts, and some I already even practiced (taking time deleting photos that don't spark anything for me or are just repetitive) but you seem to have a way of tying it all in so logically and coherently. You have an amazing way with words and just expressing your ideas in informative and beautifully crafted videos Johnny. I've definitely learned a lot from your videos.
Those are some invaluable pieces of advice! What my wife and I also do, we made a habit to make physical albums every year on St. Valentine's day with photos from the previous year. We take turns in composing and ordering those albums, so this year I make it, and the next year my wife will make another one. It takes some effort to condense 1 year to an album that comprises of 30-40 photos, but it's worth it. It's so nice to look through, like a book, and it's nice to show around when you gather your friends and relatives. We now have 7 of those and we intend to keep it going till the end ;)
This video is awesome 😊 I found that from my last few years of travelling with my family, sketching places on the day really helps build an image in my head of what was going on around me, the sounds and sometimes smells when I was drawing that picture. I realise that it is a very specific thing to do to remember locations, events etc. But looking at one of my sketches even years after doing it brings me right back to the moment I drew it and sometimes what I was doing for the rest of the day.
Hey, People. Love your comments. Especially the ones that talk about fears. Fears of loosing the memory of life and etc. I really think that some of you just need to learn how to let go, everything is impermanent. And nothing that is truly lost can be truly returned. Find the balance of living here and now :3
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I do something similar, but for me, it happened my accident. Every time I hear a new song, I keep on listening to the same song until I get bored or a better songs comes my way.
Essentially, what it has done is divided my life into various songs that I have loved at different points of my life. When I listen to the same song again in the future, I remember exactly what I was going through at that point of time in my life.
This is truly magical for me.
This happens the same way with me, is incredible.
Me too, I've got a note on my phone where I write down for every month the most significant songs/albums that I loved in that period :)
I do this too! I go by albums or artists sometimes.
This is exactly what happens with me too
omg I'm exactly the same!
This is incredible, I'm so grateful that you made this.
Fancy seeing you here! It's people like you and Johnny that drive the narrative of living an intentional life. Thank you both for your work, you're single-handedly changing lives out here.
Hey man, love your channel!
i was actually thinking of you during the entire video
Nathaniel Drew I delete pics whenever I’m on a flight. Perfect time
Can't believe you're here
A journal is a great thing to have while travelling. While the photos can capture the visual information, a journal can contain what you were feeling and thinking. The best part is that writing in your journal can be done at the end of the day when the memory is still fresh such that it doesn't interfere with the moment.
I'm just 19 but I cry out of happiness reading my old journals.
And maybe you can put some flowers for the scent
I did this during my first trip to Japan and I'm so glad I wrote about it! I wrote a lot about little, innocent moments that happened during my trip for a whole month, and reading now about them feels like time hasn't passed, I can remember things easily ☺
Also, recording sounds (I'm not talking about recording videos) is a very good option too, just sounds of the environment 🌱
And if you are comfortable drawing you can sketch little details during a trip or even during your regular days. It is also a nice way to practice drawing and relax for a few minutes ✏
@@forget.me.not.I did journal writing for years but it requires lot of discipline, sometimes I don't want to recall a bad event from the day just to write in the journal...
Yah i do that and confimred
Basically keep things (photos) that spark joy
And spark memories
Konmari method applies to everything
@@mariahcareygreece haha yep
Make sure you say thank you for the memories before you click delete
Haha you sound like my girlfriend. Is this mary kondo or some shit lol
The first reason I started photography was a weird fear of forgetting life.
Tyler Stalman I’m about to do the same, for the very same reason.
That's why I started journaling.
When I was a teenager I had a sudden realization that over the years I had thrown away all of my childhood toys and possessions in a slow process of attrition, and with them, I realized I had disposed of countless memories, feelings, and passions I had as a kid and will probably never recall again. Since that day I have been a keen photographer, and and terrified of losing my library of pictures.
Tyler Stalman this is totally true for me either
I feel like the reason I started photography (well a part of the reason I started photography) is because I guess in a way I wanted to recreate feelings I have or had for nostalgic memories I do remember but couldn't quite know how to tell people with the right words of why or how I feel those memories are so important for me. So I feel like through pictures I would be able to express the feelings I have for nostalgic moments in life I cant tell other people otherwise through words. And I hope through those pictures they'll in a way no exactly how I feel and the cunfusion I felt of why I couldn't tell them with words.
But that's just one reason I want to do photography. There's many other reasons but this is probably the core important meaning behind it. But then again I don't take pictures as often as I would like to because I'm afraid of what other people would think which causes me to not take pictures. Then I feel terrible because I cant express my self or do what I love because the fear of others judging me.
Also I tend to over think the reason why I take a picture. Most of the time I take the picture for how it looks rather than finding a meaning or story behind it, which will cause the photo to not be special.
I don't know what I'm talking about, maybe I'm blabing nonsense. ok anyways sorry for the long message
I spent TWO MONTHS on deleting all the unnecessary photos. My family would say to me that it would be better if I did something more important. But deleting photos is greatly important to me! I always feel that when you sort out your photos, you sort out your memories as well! I had about 20K PHOTOS, but now I have only 2K and that’s enough for me. I feel SO GOOD while scrolling my photos now and sparking ONLY MEMORABLE photos in my head! Thank you so much for this video! Finally I found someone who mentions the importance of all this!
how many years it took you to gather 20k photos?
I’m postponing this for way too long that I like to admit (probably the same time since this video was released) I have now 30k photos, and want to get down to 5k. Just got a big hard drive, plan on putting everything there, and just keep the best of the day on the phone. Will take a few weeks to get it done
i have 40 k photos and it took me 1.5 years to reach this number LOL I don’t even know how to start deleting them
@@aisu5969 that's like 75 photos a day. 😂😂😂
@@miguelosterroht hey! ~ you don't have to stress that much, like just do it as a little routine, to "lose some free time". I want to start organizing my photos, on the premise that I will relive some memories down the road. :)
Thanks! have a good day!
Cries as a student where my photo album is 90% pictures of professor's writing on the board and 10% of actual social engagements.
CamScanner (been using it for years) or something like it. It keeps a separate gallery and it can export to PDF. It keeps it nice and clean ;)
@@andorfb that's not the point
@@Dhia_Hadhri What is the point then?
andorfb I guess maybe because he’s so busy as a student that he doesn’t get to go out and have social engagements. Although I like your suggestion, I’m going to go check the app out now
@@mattparker3068 Don't know if it's the best app, It's just the one that I'm using.
I get it now :) Here's how I understood it (through my personal experience): he HAS actual social interaction, but the memories are "buried" in an overwhelming number of photos for university. This is what used to happen to me. I went out a lot, but only took tens of pictures, that got lost in the gallery among hundreds of pictures of documents, whiteboards etc.
people hate it when i am always taking pictures but then they appreciate it when years later they have the memories because of my efforts!
THIS! I'M IN THE EXACT SITUATION! High five to all the record keepers out there!
Yess, my friends always love my pictures I take with my camera even if they are annoyed in the moment when I have to ask to stop our hike for the one hundredth time😂
Same here x1000. In fact I have stopped taking pictures lately because my flame got extinguished by the things said to me by the people closest to me. :((((( A little bit of me died that day.
@@charlotte22 your friendship was at stake unless you stopped taking pictures? Sounds like a shaky friendship from the start then
@@floroberg No, it was more that I thought I was performing service by taking great pictures and later sharing them but I learned my efforts weren't appreciated in the least.
One thing I started doing in 2016 was to actually record videos of what I wanted to remember (like the ocean waves and the breeze on a sunset when in Monaco) and talk about what I was feeling in that video. It's crazy how good it felt to relive those memories years later.
Well I'll be honest - At the beginning of the video I was like:
a) Does this actually work?
b) Even if it does I don't take a lot of photos that "document" my life sooo ... it is probably not for me.
Well, here I am after about one and a half hours going through my photos and deleting something around 6300 of them (granted its from like 2012 to today). The best part is that when I was going through them I was happy, laughing and even shedding a few genuine tears from the happy memories that it mead "re-live".
It's not often that I comment on a RUclips video but I wanted to share my thoughts & experience.
Thank you for making this video and helping me "re-live" parts of my life
Not gonna lie, somehow reading this brought a tear to my eye.
@@zakbobby Same
I am afraid that you can't have that "re-live" again.
@@sashwatpandey4673 Well yes, that's true but only partially. I go through my photos from time to time and the experience isn't the same - it's at a "That was fun/cool" level.
I can 100% agree that when I was doing that for the first time the experience was amazing, then it sort of was less exciting/ emotional - I guess the "Law of diminy returns" applys to everything.
why were u deleting em?
concerning the last step (reliving memories and the emotions that come with them): i started doing something over four years ago (when i was 15) with no intention of it ever becoming this big of a part in my life. but it did. and it's really simple but also really effective. i just make a lil 1-4 minute video every month containing photos and videos of that month, played over a song that i listened to alot or that was important to me because i listened to it in an especially memorable moment. now, i have this library of videos for every month, and every time i watch one i feel the way i felt in that time. i also got better in memorizing random events because i can always be like oh, that one time we drove around at 1am? that was in february '16, because i rewatch the videos so often that i know it's in there.
(sorry for my english, isn't my first language)
Great idea. And your English is fantastic! It sounds really natural, with the only mistakes being a few wrong prepositions (which is fine, native speakers make those mistakes too) and not capitalizing the first words of sentences (please at least always capitalize the pronoun "I", it's not "i"). But really, there is no reason to include that little message at the end in future comments, and no reason to be insecure about your English!
Love this! Will try this too :)
twenty paphønies that sounds awesome. I’m going to try to start doing that as well!
@@bennemann wow thanks for the honest and nice reply, you rarely see that on youtube! i'm trying to get to a place where i'm happy with my english, but especially when writing about more complicated things like the videos, i sometimes get confused, but i'm happy it isn't that noticable!
very good thinking. in my case, i only upload photos relevant recently on a private album using facebook so thats really cool. where do u store the videos after?
We tend to forget something because our brains need to delete unimportant information. Johnny, one of the techniques I always do when I try something new is listening to a new song. For example, add a new song to your playlist when you travel next time. Listen to it in the car, before sleep, during the day. 5-15 times a day.
Then, when you're leaving the place, stop the song, remove it from your playlist.
Wait for some time, then listen to that song again. It will bring all emotions and feeling you were experiencing at that moment.
Works with me as well.
That’s so true
I had that unintentionally when being in France. Every time I was in the car, there was playing bad habits from Ed Sheeran. Every time I later heard that song, I was thrown back to my France exchange.
Wow, that's a brilliant idea
This!! I listened to an album for the first time while I was driving in the middle of nowhere on a California road with the windows down and the smell of oranges completely filled the car. It was amazing. I forgot about the album for months, but now whenever I listen to that memory comes back to me very clearly and it's one of my all time favorite albums.
One of my absolute favourite things to do is a "one second of the day" where i document every day of the year in one second increments. As a photographer myself, I find this the best way for me. When I see a snippet of the day, I'm most likely to remember it, without losing all feeling through taking 200 photos. Watching it at the end of the year is SO rewarding and those 6 minute videos are something I'm going to have for the rest of my life. You also get so many mundane experiences as I'm not going on trips every day, and little things like doing homework or watching the rain are so much more meaningful and memorable :)
I started doing this exact thing this year, and so far, i adore it.
For anyone curious, there's an app that makes it easy. "1 Second Every Day"
dont take photos for you, take them for those you leave behind bc inevitably you will forget them all. I take many pics and double back them up every decade for my kids, not me but for the pics i really want to make sure they stay, i put in a photo album bc it only takes a solar flare to lose everything digital which is also inevitable.
Most likely my grand kids will have a few photo albums that i bothered to print, alot more than the 1 photo album of my childhood.
Print the pics you really want to last imo, keep the rest.
Sort of the same as this video but smarter i think
I did it when i was in highschool because there was an app but then lost all progress when switching phones, so i stopped. I think im going to pick it up again
@@emmamakesbadart omg, thats awful, just take normal selfies in the same spot every day.
Now you just need to figure out how to put it into reverse bc i think it would suck to watch yourself age in front of your eyes, then look into a mirror :(
This is worth doing a TED talk about.
Absolutely. It's brilliant. It affects everyone.
Oh definitely. 12 sentences worth of information stretched out to fifteen minutes. A TED talk it is already
still nice to watch tho
I second this!
It's not. It's quasi science that the world does not need more of.
@@ZelenoJabko eh it's still useful ways of thinking to be reminded of. I hope people don't take it as science although I'm sure some do due in part to its presentation
Record people's VOICE.
I'd love to hear my grandparents voices.
A video or audio recording of them talking or reading a book would be so precious to me
i'm only 16 and i've been worrying about forgetting my life for years. i became a pic/video hoarder in a desperate attempt to have things documented as much as possible, even if they're really bad pic/vids. this video scares me, but i'm definitely going to try this right now and keep it in mind for the future. thank you :)
i feel very simliar, i think these memories are great but it's also important that you can let go and live in the moment
you will forget, and that's okay. don't worry about it too much and enjoy life right now or you'll miss it.
How did it go?
Same. I hoard way too much photos. Now, I'm sorting all of it and hide the duplicates. I like Johnny's philosophy but I'm too scared to delete them
Ughh I wish I did exactly this starting at 16, I'm now almost 18 and the last two years have been the best of my life but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna forget them 😥 I already did forget some things :/
Anyways I didn't take almost any photos mostly because I hate taking photos and I just like living in the moment and feeling the moment without being bothered with photos or the future. But now that I watched this video and realized how important it is to document my life and I regret not having documented anything I'm gonna start making an effort to take more photos (and then delete most of them lol)
I’ve always been shy and scared of cameras and years later when I looked into all the photos of our dance groups, parties, exchange programs ... I wasn’t there. It really makes you feel special looking back to your memories
I have similar friends and i talked them and changed them. Now they are bombarding instagram and whatsapp status with photos.😅.
Same situation.
From 12 to 19, visually, my life is a blur.
But oh well we can only change what's yet to come.
True. I think have just a handful of footage of myself when I was in highschool. But I think the reason also ties to the same reason why I didn't take selfies at that time 😅
same thing for me. It's sad when I think about it.
I’m super forgetful. It’s pretty bad.
My sister passed away a year ago. I loved photography and she loved modeling.
I shot a lot of photos and videos of her. I captured so many sweet moments that I had completely forgotten about and only remembered when I was looking through my old pics and videos of her.
I’m so glad I was able to capture those moments.
"only keep the ones that spark joy for you"
*Marie Kondo joined the chat*
hahahahah~
I see that reference
Haha
Same energy
This is why I journal. Those little random memories you don't even know you want to remember. The dates he mentions had me running through Journals getting as close as I could to the dates. I need to write more this was fun!!!
Do you have like a daily schedule for journaling? I can't get into regular schedule for the life of me, tried doing it in the morning, in the evening before bedtime, during the day, etc. Maybe journaling is just not for me, but I love the concept so much, so I'm not giving up
@@prettylittleravenna No I keep my journal on my computer desk were I spend most of my time or on the night stand by my bed. It makes remembering to write a little easier.
TJP With Donte Good idea
I kept journals for short periods of my life and I love reading them, it's such a crazy glimpse into my past mind which no amount of photos could bring back. It's just way too hard for me to keep it up for any significant amount of time :(
Momera Same 😩
As a photographer during this quarantine I started doing film photography. The message i want to share with others is that when you have only 36 or less shots you start thinking what do you actually want to memorize in the form of a photo. As you said Johnny less photos mean more time to put down the camera and just enjoy and live the moment. PS : I haven't developed the films i shot since June so memories are waiting//
If google ever kills google Photos, my life will be done for
same
I really like Johnny Harris’ approach and I do something similar! I’d suggest getting an external hard drive dedicated to just saving photos for memories. Categorize each photo by month and year and then you’ll have a vast array of years organized by folders refined by months where you can click into that month folder from June 2006 (for example), and you can relieve that month! That way you don’t need to rely on cloud services and you can access your photos via usb. The only thing with this method is that you have to be diligent in uploading your photos to the hard drive through your computer every so often.
LastMinuteFilms oh, I already do that! I haven’t reached the point where I need to go external, however. I have a 500GB ssd I use as a boot drive. I keep important games and programs on it as well, with 100gb left over for copying new photos/videos.
When I’m done editing them, I’ll move them over to my 2TB hard drive, where I’ve been collecting and organizing pictures by year/month/day/phone:camera since 2016.
But still, if the drive failed and Photos died, well that’d be 💀
@@bruhdabones yeah i agree, saving on external hard drives can be risky. My friend's 1TB wd hard drive stopped working with lots of game in it.
vivek K WD is also kinda bad, idk. LaCiE or whatever their name is makes rugged ones. Hard drives cannot handle lots of movement, so an external SSD is faster and safer tbh. But I’ll keep using my internal drive as long as possible, because 120MBps is not a thing USB can do.
Forgot to mention, I also have a 1TB drive for any programs that don’t fit on my SSD. So the ssd is for fast and important stuff, the 1TB drive is for less important stuff, and the 2TB drive is for photos and videos.
"When was the last time you saw a hamster?"
Me: *holding my pet hamster in my lap* Well then. Lmao
"the scary thing is that you dont even remember when was the last time you saw a hamster"
I haven't seen one for real so far... Welp
I remeber it
Jakub del Saar last time i saw one was in 2012 or some shit
@@noodledoodle6029 you haven't ever been in pet shops?
Since our brains evolved to remember the bad stuff easier than the good stuff (to avoid it/learn/survive) I really really appreciate having photos of the good times. Great video!! I appreciate this in depth explanation of experiences around taking photos!!
This video really hit home to me... I took videos of my grandfather and I playing cards last year before he passed away. Nothing special, just something he and I would do after school when I was a kid and when I was home on break from college. After he passed away last year I look back on those videos as the most important possession in the world to me. I strive to find the line between capturing my life and being in the moment, but as someone who is very paranoid about forgetting things I skew towards documentation. I think photos and videos ground me to where I was and what I was feeling. Most people will never see them. I’m making a little time capsule for nobody, but it’s a bit of comfort in the void. I hope one day to show my own grandkids HD footage of their great great grandfather so they can maybe see how special he was. Where words fail me videos can do justice. Thank you for another great video Johnny, this is making me pretty emotional at the office.
I like when you said, "I'm making a little te capsule for no one." Sounds like the title of a deeply philophical book
Oh hey! I remember seeing you on a vlogbrothers video(?) and watched a few of your videos. Cool to run into you!
Carson Coleman the internet is pretty small sometimes! Thanks for checking us out!
Meghna Raj well I suppose I have to write it now!
Having a time capsule is a great idea
It just made me incredibly sad when you made me realise how much I've lost my memories
Same here, especially since my SD card is getting corrupt, losing alot of files and ive basically had it for years... Lost so many photos and videos already
You're the kind of bloke that makes me want to be a better person. Thanks for this.
BRB gotta go cry over how big our babies are. I'M FINE.
I think the best part about what you guys do on this platform, is having a way to look back. Years from now when the kids are 20, you'll have all of this to look back at. Great reason to keep it up💖 Love.
Iz Harris AWW
You really have a partner to be proud of. You probably gonna have most of your moments/memories catalogued.
I'm somehow "afraid" to delete photos. Even the nonsense. Also, I feel like the decision to press that button gives somehow value to the photo. And then, never again a photo will be taken from the exact same point in universe. Impossible to truly repeat, information lost. Something that I find no value in the moment of deleting *might* eventually be of value to the future me. Hope it doesn't sound creepy :)) Still, I believe that intentionally not taking pictures is a really good way to better associate true memories to the ones you took. Used to abuse that shutter button because of the fear of forgetting. And as you said, that made me create no memory to forget in the first place.
PS: I love the idea that what seems mundane right now to me would've been so fascinating to my past self. Your video just made me realize that the reverse is also true.
Your comment just made me able to explain why i dont delete photos lol
even dic pic?
Yep, same
For me, I revisit pictures not to delete them, rather to manually move them from the mobile Camera folder into my harddisk, where I have to sort them by year & month. (Though of course I still delete some blurry & bad pics and all that - prioritizing memory space) Sure there's the metadata, but when there's a looooong list of them? It takes a long-ass time to find a picture, makes the folder load a long time, and it just looks messy & unpleasant to experience.
I can relate to that on a deep level. Looks like I'm not the only one in fear of loosing my memories and deleting photos. But I think I'm unintentionally takes less pictures now than before, because I'm taking my time to actually enjoy the moment ✌️
I began doing this process two years ago without even having seen this video. I can't describe how amazing it has been.
You are so right, limiting photos of each event DOES enhance the memory-making of that event!
I can honestly say Johnny Harris is my favorite RUclipsr/Filmmaker now. It was Casey Neistat back in the day but after now Johnny's on that threshold alone. Iz is also such a sweetheart and funny in matching Johnny's somewhat opposite personality calmer characteristics. Fav couple on RUclips hands down. Just chill personalities and the best storytellers
I couldn't help but notice how our memories resemble the universe - with the most memorable moments being the brightest stars... knowing that there is more out there in the void, even if we are unable to "see" it in this very moment. Great video Johnny!
my only way of recollecting events is actually by listening to music. as a big introvert, i’ve been listening to music basically 8hrs a day for almost 10 years. as i associate songs with memories, everytime i here some music, rythme or melody, it makes me relieve the said memorie. the only problem with that, is that i may forget the name of the song ..
That's true.
This needs to be talked about much more! Coming from a Filipino family, all of my relatives are all so caught up with taking pictures and videos of every second of an event or an experience, but sometimes I fear that they're living through the pictures and not the actual moment. Like you said, the visuals are there, but the immersive experience (the feelings and senses) of that present moment is lost
I've been writing down everyday in my journal. It only takes 5 minutes.
Then you read your journal on your birthday; wishing to do better in the coming year.
You're so right, thanks. I'll try to do this for 2020, this is advice i plan to remember :)
Don't you ever run out of Journals....
@@waluigi3515 Hi, you can try this journal www.amazon.co.uk/One-Line-Day-Five-Memory/dp/0811870197 basically you write very short paragraph about every day... i do it 3 yrs already and I always remember situations and feeling I think i lost already... :)
@@miskaball1734 It helped, thanks.
Extremely powerful pitch, that’s exactly what I needed to hear in my life.
I kind of lost the motivation for photography because of over abusing it.
Thank you so much for this.
Hit straight into the heart
As someone who has been recording my life since 1980, I identify with this. I was surprised you didn’t mention journaling. That would be a way to record smells and feelings. I’ve journaled in many ways but for a few years now I’ve been committed to journaling digitally, using the Day One app. You can even add audio to entries, so sometimes I do that to record the ambience.
I also caption my photos in Lightroom. By the way, I have tens of thousands of photos in LR and it’s running fine; not bogged down. And because I caption them, I can search and find what I’m looking for pretty efficiently.
Ive journaled for years as well. It is so therapeutic and beneficial. That app sounds amazing!
Yeah journaling and clicking pictures is like book and movie
Some like reading it some visually looking at it
How magic is that, I've been searched for weeks for an app that can do exact the same thing like Day One, but I couldn't because didn't know the keyword. Thank you so much!
Yes, I do remember July 17, 2007... that's my birthday ;)
Hmmm i was 5, hard to remember.
Mine too 🤪
I was a little over two and a half years old, so I have little recollection
Same here!
Happy Belated Birthday wishes Eva !! 😍💐
I actually use Snapchat for this. It is pretty convenient to take pics and save them to memories without having to post it. They also have throwbacks for each day so everyday I am reminded on where I was or what I did or what I wished 1 or 2 years ago, which is pretty great and motivating sometimes
Snapchat photo quality is terrible, though. I stopped using it to take and save photos when I realized that pressing the download button on a Snapchat photo is the equivalent quality of taking a screenshot of your screen. Tremendous loss of quality and no meta data.
Apple devices has the reminder too!
Little advice for everybody reading this : I took photos both with Snapchat and stock photo app and I am so disappointed that I took a lot with snapchat ! When I wanted to export all my photos from every devices to one unique Photos album (the Apple software), I couldn't have the chronological order for the snapchat pictures. Indeed, saving pictures into Memories then exporting them make it loose their medatas, including picture capture date. that's a shame and I won't take photo with this app anymore because I add to put back dates on hundreds of photos
Actually a lot of apps do that and most are a better fit than Snapchat
there're some gorgeous moments i've experienced in my life and even if i brought a phone by, i just don't want to take pictures, instead i stand there and use all my senses like, to feel. i wished the time was stopped for a few minutes just to let me sit on the rock and look very very far away across the foggy landscape.
personally i don't regret that much. there's plenty of things out there could "spark joy" and be a string that connects me with nostalgia.
Truong Laivan honestly I do the same. I sit/stand and put myself into a full awareness of what’s going on, and it helps me to remember how I was feeling and what it smelt like. It’s truly crazy and amazing!
I really don't follow travellers. But this man!
Your videos. Your basic tips. Everything about this channel and you, is just so peaceful to watch. Keep up the good work. Keep inspiring ♥️
In 2013, I backpacked through France, Andorra, and Spain with a friend, and decided to do a travel sketchbook. I didn't set enough time aside, so the drawings are all rushed, and incomplete. But I learned a lot, and I love looking back on them. More importantly, a new habit was formed. I highly recommend drawing and journaling as a way to connect with the moment. It's had arguably the largest impact on how I see the world and my place in it.
I also love the concept of printed photo books :) thank you for the video Jonny, I will rethink my process with photos
You were coming from a place where you took too many photos. (I've always thought that taking photos made you forget about experiences, or made you not fully experience moments in the first place.) So, I'm coming from a place where I take almost NO photos so that I can fully immerse myself and appreciate the moments for what they are. I figured if I don't remember something, then it must not have been influential to me or my life. However, there are usually some exceptions for things that I might have really liked but forgot about. So, I made it a point to only take pictures of things that I know that I absolutely never want to forget. Yet, I still feel like I haven't taken enough pictures in my life, to fill the gaps in between my favorite memories. So I want to thank you for providing a well thought out process for documenting life in a way that still remains mostly non-obtrusive to the immersive live-life-in-the-moment experience. I'll try to go at my own pace in taking more photos. Cheers!
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. Really made me think.
I love how thoughtful and intentional you are. You're the man.
This is such a unique, important video that EVERYONE should watch, thanks for the inspo Johnny!
No way every person in the universe is going to watch this. You're such a dreamer.
Damn this is easily one of my fav youtubers!
Keep up the good content man!
You had me locked in a trance from the moment you have started reliving memories with the car breaking down till the end. Thank you for this video. This is a problem I recognized but had no way of addressing. You did that for me. Thank you
I'm one of those peoples that feel upset when I realize that our memories fade. I wish I could take candid pictures in special moments all the time because I don't ever want to forget about that feeling - ever.
Rebecca Chen you could write it down so you dont forget about it at all
I believe that we are made to forget our memories. We aren't designed to remember every good memory in our lives! If it was efficient and good for us to remember so much then our brains would have evolved to do so. I think this kind of obsession with recording every good moment is setting ourselves up for mental health problems and anxiety - living in the past good memories rather than focusing on the present moment.
Just my two pence.
Peace
Leon Nixon But our Brains remember nearly everything, you just need a trigger for your faded memories to come back. So with your logic we are meant to remember nearly every thing, because our brains do.
Plus it's a way for the brain to detoxify all the "useless" data in order to keep working and be able to absorb new information. It would keep only the highlight and important things. It's like an organic computer with limited hard drive space lol.
Who made and design us that way ?
@@منهاج-ي5ت God? Evolution? Depends who you ask. Though, there's an evolutionary benefit to not being able to recall every day and it's memories.
I wouldn't worry about it, evolution doesn't give a shit about our mental health.
I'd like to add that communal storytelling is sort of a lost art but such a beautiful idea for how to remember small and big events with loved ones. And yes, you can create a story on your own, documenting the details and themes of your own life by immersing yourself in your experiences and "romanticizing" them as if you're in a book or a movie, maybe with the aid of a journal. But if you have the opportunity and people willing, try sparking conversations about that trip you had or that time you got caught in the rain. Combined with Johnny's point that you need to slow down each moment and let your brain absorb the senses, I think your memory will be more powerful than you think.
You take really nice pictures.
Robin Williams - "If I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling". From Good Will Hunting.
Chris Hernando the ceilings is just as nice! hahaha
It smells like too many slightly sweaty tourists jammed into one room ;)
Logic and reason is a machine.
I needed this. Thank you.
For some time I become really afraid of not having beautiful moments of my life captured on the photos, and I also had a some sort of anxious perfectionism that led to tons of pictures in my gallery, many of them looking just similar.
But recently I started to understand that the most important thing is to actually feel these moments. To be present as fully as possible. With no camera. And several pictures are really enough.
This guy is just flexing his photographic memory
shut up
and the fact u dont have any replies is crazy
And he's flexing his iMac and iPhone working together to the Windows guys
Marie Kondo your memories basically ^^
tinyruin THEY SPARK JOY
I was cleaning out my Dad’s home after he passed away a few years back, mind you I was 49 at the time, and I found stack and stacks of old photos taken between my age of 13-18. Most of them were taken inside my home with my brothers, step Mom, step sister, old friends, and other relatives (Dad was in very few). Anyway for the next 3-4 hours of going through the stack just looking to simply figure out which ones I would keep, it turned into the most unexpected, unplanned, bizarre, enjoyable, thought provoking journey backwards I’ve ever taken. Through many of them I was able to tap into how I was feeling and thinking the moment it was taken. Truly amazing and it came out of nowhere.
For me "being in the moment" happens before the pictures. Taking pictures happens kind of in between - after i've gone through my first "impression" of the moment, i seal that in with some photos - but sandwich it into a bit more of absorbing of this experience- whether I'm alone or not. Good times to take a photo: when you're turning a corner, walking out of a building, returning to the same spot after covering a place that "loops". Make the most out of the moments you won't remember and take your photos then. But always let your brain take it all in.
I used to think about this on the bus and I realized that I didn’t remember the day before on the bus. I even decided in my mind I would remember that day, but I didn’t really, all of the times I rode the bus blended together so I have no idea if it was dark and cold, or sunny and warm. I rode the bus twice a day for years. It’s kinda sad.
hey I do that too.
This the same for everyone because its easier for us to process.
2:44 In April of 2011, Indian International Cricket team lifted the World Cup after 28 years and I vividly remember the whole day of 2 nd April 2011........... Still gives me goosebumps when I recall it.
I'm using this technique since 2009 and deleted a lot of photos and I also started creating folders for every year. Everytime I open these and look through the photos I am able to reactivate memories and tell little stories which happened around that moment I took the photo.. now I know it was a great idea! Definitely keeping up with it. The idea in the comments about creating little videos for every month with a song you heard at that time is also amazing.
This is basically why I have kept a journal since 8th grade
I've always had this fantasy of keeping at least a thought/photo a day, but picking up bad habits seems to be the only consistent thing in my life
I started being more deliberate about keeping a journal and never miss a day, just answering 'so how was your day?'. But with just 1 year, there's so much written in it that I wonder if I'll ever read it? No one can possibly go back and read all that so what's the point anyway?
The more data there is the less useful it becomes. Maybe I need to konmari that too.
Having it on a Word document instead of physical notebooks have helped me since I write too much, and it allows for navigation and search.
3rd grade, though not consecutively
@@JustAnotherMe digitising them can save a lot of space. Also, handwriting recognition is bound to improve in the future so they can become searchable and editable at some point.
This is why I like instagram stories/archives so much.
Very interesting, instead of photos, I use music to remember. When I’m in the moment , I listen to a song, after five years when I listen to the song again, I completely immerse into my memory.
Edit : and yes I take photos and mostly use film but as clear as you stated 14:50 it’s more of experiencing the moment than capturing it
Actually, this such a good concept, at the end though when he was talking about what photos sparked joy all I could think of was Marie Kondo cleaning out closets and saying to only keep the clothes that sparked joy.
Easily one of the greatest piece of advice I've received in the last year. Thank you so much for making this video, I am very gratefull!!
Writing and meditation is another way I remember life. I recently came across some previous writings of a time my wife and I were in living in california. I had written out what we had done on that very normal and uneventful day and it was amazing to walk through that time again.
I started taking my film camera to some trips and vacations I went on and it was one of the best decision I've ever made. Having to cut down the number of photos you take leaves so much more room for memories
I am normally a person that isn't very emotional, however your videos have something ebout them, especially the soundtrack, that makes me feel kinda melancholic/sad in a good way. Maybe that sounds kinda weird/silly, but what I want to say is that your videos are very special! Please never stop making mezmerizing content!
Great video. I've also noticed that drawing the moment while you're in it is a great way to really notice things you otherwise wouldn't (though this is clearly just visual and can be impractical).
Another way to remember more is through knowledge. If you're walking through the forest, you might notice (and remember) the colour of the trees, the fresh air etc. But if you know the type of bird that's sitting on a branch, maybe you'll actually notice the nuance of yellow in its feathers or the way it sings. Memory and how you experience things are connected to knowledge, so learning more means experiencing more
My way of taking photos changed over the past years. After I got my first DSLR, I took pictures of almost everything that seemed to be worth shooting while travelling. On one journey through Europe I visited 9 major cities, ending up with thousands of photos and not remembering the moments anymore. In my memory sometimes I do not even know what was where, and I even completely forgot about one city.
Now I take my camera with me everytime I go out, but look at the things first, and only take a picture when it is really really worth it. Sometimes my gf orders me to take a photo for her, because she wants to remember something I do not care for. This way I might only shoot 1 or 2 pictures a day on a journey, but these shots mean something to me.
One of the more interesting videos I've ever watched on RUclips. (and I watch a lot). I'm going to start implementing this approach immediately. Thank you.
Such a wonderful look into something we can all connect with. Thanks Johnny!
Man... when you put aside that sequence for photographers, I felt cared for... Anyways, great content as always!
Johnny, thank you so much for this video.
I’ve always had a similar thought, that I have too many photos, and most of them I don’t really want to remember.
When I’m traveling, I always try to balance taking pictures with enjoying and feeling the present moment.
One thing I would is to add captions to some pictures, so you can have a kind of a journal along with your memories.
At least in iOS you can add it already.
Casey Neistat: "I NEVER delete any footage"
yes because when you're a creator, you use even random small footage to put in compilations so you have the sense of continuity going on
And Dave 2d "I delete all the videos as soon as I upload them to RUclips" 😂😂
John, the only guy that made the process of decluttering your gallery felt like re-living the past. He's a damn great guy.
i love johnny, but "only"? pffft, come on.
My third time watching this. I've been taking less photos ever since. It is just so great that I came across this video two years ago and followed the advice. My camera roll used to be a bunch of mess that I never wanted to click into. Now it has become a great place for me to re-live all my memories!
UPDATE: 5 years later, I am still using this method and yes it works!
I'm so happy I'm not alone. I've been doing literally the EXACT same thing for 2 or 3 years now with the plus of going through old albums where I did not have a cellphone or camera and scanning those to cover the other years. I'm only 17 so I have pictures from the day I was born to present day and explore my memory ever so often with my family in the living room. Hope to continue like this for the rest of my life [Tons of backups of all sorts just in case] and when I'm 80+ go back over all of them and die peacefully - leaving my life digitalized for my family...
BTW I also do this through songs. On spotify, I have a private playlist called brain hits: It's those songs you temporarily love and get stuck in your head so you listen to them all the time for a week up to a month. Now I have 50+ in there and always listen to them when I'm on a plane or travelling and they evoke an amazing memory of a certain time in my life as my tastes develop.
*looks through insane library of photos, remembering things I had forgotten about*
*Cries uncontrollably*
I feel that
I love the way you tell stories. You are such a great storyteller. You have the power to say specifically what the viewers want to listen. It is a very interesting video that I really like.
This was very thought-provoking.
I think another helpful thing is to write down stuff in some kind of journal, that is just filled with things that you just really really need and really really want to remember. Same as here, a little later when you've filled the journal, you can go through it and erase the stuff that isn't necessary to remember or rewrite it in a new journal, summarizing the experience in three sentences at most.
Yeah man that was really interesting. I too have been downsizing my huge bulk of photos, often of the same thing. I remember when you had to get your photos developed and so each photo was precious. Photos capture our lives and hence they are our histories. I appreciate your advice on organizing photos for a more memorable life.
This is such a fresh perspective, really made me think.
This is one of the best videos i've seen in a long time! Thank you.
i love this! i have an app called 1 Second Everyday, and it captures both big and little moments in a second-long clip that truly sparks so many memories when i watch them back during a monthly recap. i definitely need to work on deleting photos and allow myself to relieve memories in a decluttered space, and this video for sure is motivating!
Lately I've been obsessed with organizing and watched a lot of Marie Kondo, then realizing her "spark joy" concept works amazing too on decluttering the brain and other intangible parts of life. It's cool to see you brought the concept up indirectly 😁
I am so glad I stumbled on this video. Forgetting memories has been troubling me for quite some time, and issues with lightroom you mentioned, after losing a ton of metadata, just made me quit cataloging photos.
Thank you for reigniting this idea, it was very moving to watch the insights into your process.
dude onestly i think you have become one of the gratest creators on the plattform, every video is a huge joy to watch and helpes me a lot in hard times butt also when im happy.
How do you handle Screenshots? - My Library is Full of them
On iPhone there's an album for all screenshots. Then I guess you only keep the ones that spark memories or joy. I think Google Photos has something like that too. I'm saving some screenshots from the "draw something" game. Good memories when I see those drawings :)
make a favourite meme album discard the rest (maybe extract important info in a google drive document, or cloud based note)
Google Photos!!!!!!
Archive them all, then open the screenshots folder to find them
Firefox ScreenshotsGO
Sometimes the RUclips algorithm recommends the strangest videos. Other times - like with this video - the algorithm just knocks it out of the park. Thanks so much for this!
I remember watching this video years ago and I just wanted to leave a quick thanks, because if nothing else, I've kept the habit of going through and deleting my photos after events or such, to only keep a few really good ones. So thank you for the inspiration on that! And also I was looking for motivation to go through all of the stuff I haven't deleted and get rid of a lot of it, which is why I came back here. So, like, your video about remembering things was remembered!
Thank you SO much for this. I feel like I always kind of knew some of these concepts, and some I already even practiced (taking time deleting photos that don't spark anything for me or are just repetitive) but you seem to have a way of tying it all in so logically and coherently. You have an amazing way with words and just expressing your ideas in informative and beautifully crafted videos Johnny. I've definitely learned a lot from your videos.
i wish more people understood this stuff.
Those are some invaluable pieces of advice! What my wife and I also do, we made a habit to make physical albums every year on St. Valentine's day with photos from the previous year. We take turns in composing and ordering those albums, so this year I make it, and the next year my wife will make another one. It takes some effort to condense 1 year to an album that comprises of 30-40 photos, but it's worth it. It's so nice to look through, like a book, and it's nice to show around when you gather your friends and relatives. We now have 7 of those and we intend to keep it going till the end ;)
"When was the last time you saw a hamster?"
**me looking at my hamster**
This video is awesome 😊
I found that from my last few years of travelling with my family, sketching places on the day really helps build an image in my head of what was going on around me, the sounds and sometimes smells when I was drawing that picture. I realise that it is a very specific thing to do to remember locations, events etc. But looking at one of my sketches even years after doing it brings me right back to the moment I drew it and sometimes what I was doing for the rest of the day.
I saved this video in a playlist I have titled "Profound" when you released it. I reference it every year or so.... still amazing
Hey, People. Love your comments. Especially the ones that talk about fears. Fears of loosing the memory of life and etc. I really think that some of you just need to learn how to let go, everything is impermanent. And nothing that is truly lost can be truly returned. Find the balance of living here and now :3