July 14th 2017 - The Champ de Mars was crowded as I was looking for the perfect point of view to capture the fireworks shot from the Eiffel Tower on France's National Day.

Five minutes later, while I finally found the right place, the fire began. But it's only when I got my camera out that I realized: one person out of two around me wasn't looking at the fireworks only through their own eyes but with their pixelated screens.

In trying to catch forever this instant, in order to enjoy it later saying and thinking “yeah, I was there”, sometimes we don't even enjoy it right now.

We often hear in our youth “only touch with your eyes”, but what if these days it was more about only tasting with our eyes? While people order their trendy coffee with latte art do they first imagine how nice it’ll be to taste it, or rather under which angle they’ll take this perfect image for their favorite social media?

This is how, in being so focused about sharing to the world how I experience my life I actually forget to enjoy it.

But at the same time, is it also still that easy to enjoy a beautiful moment, pictorially speaking, without taking a picture? Maybe this click on the shutter release makes me feel more alive? Maybe it makes me dependent to a world made of past-reality.

Nevertheless, don't you always let hundreds of images sleep in the meanderings of your phone or computer anyway? How many of them do really count for you? How many have you printed?

Nowadays, our digital tools allow us not to worry about how many images we have left. Which is a great thing for our wallets. But on top of being creatively helpful, this constraint of having a limited number of photos left probably makes us enjoy more the quality of the photo and the quality of the instant too.

And shouldn't a photographer be able to enjoy what's in front of him first, to take a great photo afterward?

As a photographer or even a simple photo lover one hates to lose a great opportunity to take a shot. But in this research of taking the perfect photo, aren't we sometimes missing this moment we're so interested in?

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