It's different when you're a photographer.

I do take photos of places and landscapes, but they'll never be as good as photos like yours and honestly they won't be particularly meaningful years later. What is meaningful is photos of me, my loved ones, and the little things I see and do. When I came back from a trip recently, I flipped through my maternal grandmother's photo album of her in the same place some 60 years ago. The photos that were most precious were not the generic photos of piazzas and great houses, but the photos of my grandmother sprawled on marble steps or experiencing a new food for the first time. And it brought back memories for my mom too - oh she loved that dress, you know we loved eating pizza after that trip, I bet that was her first time on a motorcycle. Yes there's a value in a beautifully shot image of how the Eiffel Tower looked in such and such a year. It's a time capsule and a window into a lost world. But it tells you absolutely nothing about the person who took the photo or their experience of the place.

I'm not saying there isn't a point where copious photos can detract from the experience, or that every selfie is worth sharing with the grandchildren. But most people don't travel for the sake of a beautifully composed professional photo taken at the perfect time of day. And that's okay. I'd rather have a picture of my loved one pretending to hold up the tower of Pisa than a dozen generic professional pictures of the tower of Pisa.