As someone who has spent the last two decades making my living as a photographer, I know what it's like to stare down the barrel of a lens. I have also often been in the predicament of trying to determine whether the image I hold in my head is of the actual experience or the memory of the image itself. Or whether it's because of the image that I have taken that I remember the experience around the image. The point being that if I did not have the image to conjure up, my memory would be all the poorer for it.

Whether photography can hamper memory, as research carried out by Dr Linda Henkel at Fairfield University suggests, or not, the fact is that we are now highly sophisticated visually. We have easy access to a wide range of digital images, and social media has become our way of communicating both our thoughts and visual references. Our need to create instant mementos and showcase them immediately almost to verify our very existence, shows that imagery and memory are now inextricably intertwined – we seem not to be able to free them from each other. If we don't have the images we haven't experienced the event, be it a concert, a meal at a restaurant or visiting a much photographed tourist attraction. Equally our earliest memories are often linked to a photograph.

The visual storyteller, however, is different to the obsessive social media dependent person who can't separate the ability to capture the moment from the experience itself. As a photographer I have to know when to put my camera down, if just to pause for a moment in order to consolidate, or for my eyes to survey the entire scenario.

Nelson Mandela photographed by Jillian Edelstein

I can recall the moment when Nelson Mandela tried to grab my light meter as I was preparing to photograph him, because he did not know what it was. I remember that he apologised and put it down to the fact that he was "just a country bumpkin". I will never forget the atmosphere, light, mood, location, decor and people who were present. The camera in my hand served to focus my every senses. It always does.

In a news broadcast this week, I watched a woman in the middle of a street in Soweto pan her iPad across the crowd. I didn't see a connection with the event, I saw her simply recording it. That's the difference. It's image taking rather than image making. And I think that's what Dr Henkel is endeavouring to address.

It seems sad that world leaders such as Cameron and Obama, in the midst of a memorial for Mandela, found themselves unable to resist the power of taking a selfie, in order to prove to themselves that they were indeed present at the occasion. If they did not record it, how would they have proof that they were there?

Through excessive image taking we have lost a connection – not only to our memories but also our daily lives.