012 | 4WDTouringAustralia
t’s the most trivial mystery of the modern age.
Why do digital cameras make the snap noise?
I mean back in the prehistoric days of ten years ago,
the snap noise would come from the mechanical shutter.
Early digital cameras came without the noise but punters
demanded it, even though it didn’t serve any mechanical
purpose. They wanted to know that something was happening.
And that’s why the click still exists, it lets you know that
you have engaged with the moment. That you have made a
decision to re ect on this moment. That this particular moment
is important to you and worth crystalising.
I
JIMMY O’KEEFEThe mystery becomes slightly less trivial when looking at the
phenomenon of NDEs. Near Death Experiences were a vogue
thing to study during the 1970s. It was basically when psychologists
would interview people who had died and been resuscitated back
to life.
Scores of studies were done on the survivors of drownings,
with professors and medical types searching for anything at all
in common with each survivor.
The results blew them away, as four out of ve people had
pretty much the exact same experience, y’know, the whole
light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel thing, and memories of their life
appearing in snapshots.
Many of the survivors reported that these snapshots were
accompanied by sound. That their life ashing before their
eyes, was also clicking before their ears.
So how did these Near Death Experiences affect them once
they had recovered? Well, pretty much all of them started
avoiding things in life that could possibly return to them as
horrible ashbacks. From here on in, it was all good vibes,
treating people well and all that sort of thing.
We reckon it’s the same when shooting photos out on the
road. If ya going to have that whirring snapshot noise going off
when you click the button, make it count.
RIGHT: There are snapshots blu-tacked to walls, snapshots clogging up hard drives,
and snapshots caught in the grey matter of our brains. Make sure they’re the good ones
worth revisiting. Carlisle Rogers
Snapshots of a life lived well
SHUTTER
island