Symptoms of Living

from phone-free days to film photography: my digital minimalism journey

Yesterday i was out of town for a powerlifting competition, i went to a seaside town which is two hours by car from where i live.

I woke up at 5:30 AM and the first thing I did was watch the sun rise outside the kitchen window as I prepared a packed lunch. Casually 5:30 AM is exactly the time when the sun rises this time of the year. I read in a book I finished recently that watching the sunrise or sunset every single day is crucial to understanding how small we are and how our problems are not that big, whatever happens tomorrow the sun will rise and set anyway.

the sky now

After the competition, it was early afternoon and we headed to the beach. We left the car near a small hamlet from which a path ran along the slope facing the coast. After a descent of about fifteen minutes, we arrived at a very narrow beach without any kind of bathing establishment, but where people used huts built from logs carried by the tide to shelter from the hot sun.

What happens when you don't look at the phone for hours

From the morning I never used the phone nor looked for notifications and never felt the urge to look for it. By mistake I also left both the Palma and the phone in a backpack in the car, so for hours I've been digitally isolated, yes, i was with friends, so if needed i could call for help. You can't believe what happened by not looking at the phone all day long: absolutely nothing. Except that i felt the day longer and better, I remember the heat of a midday sun with no clouds, i remember the saltiness of the water and the sea wind. Every emotion, felt real and I still remember everything, which didn't happen by staying on the phone all the time.

When my mind starts drifting and tons of thoughts start strafe through my head I focus on the sensations I'm feeling in the present moment, what I can hear, see, feel through the skin and taste. This process helps me a lot living now and not in a fantasy that exists only in my mind.

What if i want to take photos?

This is the question I made myself when i started my digital minimalism journey. The solution I use is to bring a single purpose device to take pictures. When I went to Japan last year I had an analog camera to take pictures.

analog camera

This is a plastic camera i got for a bunch of euros some years ago, it uses a 24 or 32 pictures film roll, so for a two weeks trip I got two rolls for a total of 64 pictures. In the end, once got the photos on paper i discarded most of them and kept only few, here the six best:

six best

These are the best ones but i also kept some that are not good looking but tells a story. The following one is from the first morning in Japan. It was 4 AM, because of the jet lag i woke up super early and headed to the beach, it was quite dark and wet outside, so the camera objective got foggy and the photo came out totally wadded up. I also took a picture of the sea, but beacuse of the humidity it was unrecognizable.

Some alternatives I'm trying

When I visited Tokyo I saw a lot of people using digital compact cameras from early 2000s to take pictures and i thought it could be a nice compromise between low technology and not producing film and papaer waste, so once back home I looked for my mother's one. I remembered having it beacause I used it during my elementary school trips.

cameras

I put a 16Gb SD card in it and now I have and unlimited storage for this thing. I use it when I go on short trips because it fits in a pocket unlike the bigger analog one.

Recently I got for less than 100 euros an action camera that I use for taking videos of my exercises at the gym when I don't bring my phone. I have to take videos so me and my coach can see how I execute the exercises. I used to do it with my smartphone, but once again I don't want to depend on it.

triforce

I plan to use it as replacement for the compact camera since it has some problems with the buttons and sometimes isn't possible to disable the flash. It come with two batteries and some attachments and i want to try it for a long trip.

If your focus isn't taking high quality pictures for Instagram stories and want a healthier method, going on a trip with only an analog camera for pictures is must to try at least once.


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