My eye is my camera

I have always been someone who has loved cameras, loved catching moments and even creating them to savour long after the event has passed. I have enjoyed the significant technological advances over the years, going from using Polaroid Land camera (black and white) in my formative years through the Instamatic days, then on to a pre-war Russian Zenith 35mm camera body (with Leica lens) then an Olympus OM2 with a few different bits of glass onto early heavy and slow digital cameras until finally today I have my Canon 7D Mk 1 with a number of lenses, tripods, filters etc. But for immediacy I also have my mobile phone (a Nexus 5) which can serve when I need something small and portable.

But over the past couple of years I have used my camera less and less. Not as you might imagine, because I am using my phone more. Not at all. It's because I am missing seeing so much watching the world through a viewfinder or a screen.

When I look back at my photo library I have some 18 thousand shots taken over the years with different technologies. But they also represent time that I wasn't actually looking or seeing. I was framing the shot, judging the light, focussing on the subject. What I wasn't doing was looking at what it was, what was happening around it.

Nowadays that's become more magnified as much of my life is driven by a small screen that happens to be able to help me communicate with others too. I look up timetables for transport, research locations, look at reviews, read emails and messages and get my calendar appointments, news, even watch TV or movies on this device. But I also miss too much.

The other day I left my phone at home accidentally. At first I felt a little helpless as my digital lifeline had been temporarily severed. I fidgeted and thought of the things I couldn't do. But then I started to look round and found that some new shops had arrived on my High Street that I had not noticed before. I saw a couple of people that I hadn't seen for a while (who failed to see me incidentally because they were concentrating on their phones). But what I noticed more keenly than anything was how many people were not engaging with the world around them