My wife often breathes heavy sighs when she has yet again walked 50 feet ahead of me because I stopped to pull out of my phone and take a picture of something. My computer has folders and folders of photographs, carefully sorted by date. Having never owned a proper camera, I rely on my iPhone to do all of my photography work, and wouldn’t you know it, it is always in my pocket.

It recently occurred to me that I take too many pictures. Too often do I abandon my ability to capture a scene with my mind in favor of keeping it on the hard drive inside my phone. Perhaps I found a misspelled restaurant menu funny at that moment, but was it really a memory worth attempting to keep forever?

A few months ago, I traveled with my friend Andy to visit our friend William in Arizona. On the last day of the trip, the day before the airplanes would take us back to the eastern side of the country, we took a two-hour drive to enjoy some beautiful scenery. As the car zipped around narrow curves among breath-taking mountains, I incessantly urged William to slow down so I could get a clearer photo. At one particularly picturesque location, I suggested to Andy that it was a good time to get out his camera, since he was at a disadvantage in the back seat.

“I think I’m good,” was his reply. “I’m going to try to focus on making some mental pictures.”

Andy’s words were the seed that began this transformation for me. Instead of spending time in the car with my friends, enjoying Mother Nature’s glory together, I was fixated on finding the perfect shot so that I would never forget the beauty I was witnessing. Instead of trying to be sure that I would remember the trip, I should have been living it.

In addition to taking too many pictures, I believe I am taking pictures of the wrong things, a fact that was also evidenced by my Arizona trip. This venture was my first to Arizona, and I was excited to see the dirt and cacti that replaced the grass and trees with which I am so familiar. The many open stretches of desert and high-reaching mountains demanded that I keep my phone in hand, ready to open the camera app and take pictures.

I recently went through the photos from this trip. Some are outstanding, and looking at pictures of the coffee-colored rocks reminds me of the great scenery in Arizona. The point of the trip, though, was not the scenery. It was spending time with two of my best friends, who live hundreds of miles away from me and whom I see so rarely. The pictures I took of them are far more meaningful. I took probably 100 pictures of the cactus plants in the botanical garden we visited, but the 12 or so pictures I took of my friends are far more important to me. The images of me and my buddies enjoying each other’s company are the ones I will want to show my children one day. The hundreds of pictures I took of mountains and desert and sunsets could just as easily be found through a Google search.

I am beginning to practice restraint. My phone is spending more time in my pocket when I am around beautiful scenery or my dearest friends. Capturing the moments to merely store on a hard drive no longer seems necessary.

On Easter Sunday morning, my wife and I arrived at church early, and the area around the parking lot was stunning. The sky was beautiful and blue, with a few white clouds scattered around as sunlight reflected off the buildings in the Memphis skyline. I instinctively pulled out my phone to take a picture so I could keep the memory forever. Right before pressing the button, I looked over at Heather.

“Go stand over there, please, so I can take your picture.”

She was not very happy with me, because it was early and she does not like being in pictures, but she agreed. I snapped one picture. I know that when I come across this picture in the future, it will be more special than had I neglected to ask Heather to be in it.

Hopefully by taking fewer pictures, I will improve both the moments kept in the lense and the moment kept in my mind.