Once upon a time, photography was a relatively niche hobby – and in order to engage in it, you had to know a good deal about different cameras, lighting, and various techniques and tricks of the trade – not to mention actually owning a potentially expensive camera, too.

These days, a very large number of people have cameras on their person at all times of the day and night, in the form of smartphone devices – and specialist gadgets such as GoPro cameras that allow for high quality video making at a relatively affordable price point.

When all is said and done, there are many different benefits to documenting your life and pastimes through photography. Here are just a few of those benefits.

It’s a great way of communicating your adventures with others (and it could even become a career)

One of the great benefits of documenting your life and assorted adventures through the medium of photography, is that it allows you to communicate your adventures with other people in a way that can be rich, intimate, and that can include your friends and family – as well as total strangers – in your life.

One of the potentially great things about this is that it can help to forge deeper and richer connections between you and the people you hold most dear. But another benefit is that it can, in some cases, actually help you to turn your passions into a career.

These days, there’s an entire industry out there for people who are engaging in pastimes that other people find deeply powerful and moving. Videos showing cabin building in the woods, hikes up mountains, or – for that matter – in-depth video gaming sessions, all have sizable niche subcultures behind them.

When you combine your natural interests and enthusiasms with a bit of camerawork and support from companies such as Aaduki Videography Insurance, you may well end up being able to make a living through documenting your hobbies.

A picture really is worth a thousand words

Traditionally, people have kept journals in order to capture and commemorate the day-to-day moments of their lives, including all of their highs and lows, both as an aid for personal reflection, and also in order to leave behind a record for the descendants.

While traditional journals can certainly be very powerful in a variety of different ways, it’s also true that – in many cases – a picture really is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes.

Often, seeing a striking photo of a significant moment in time can bring you straight back to that moment and what you experienced in it, complete with a rush of powerful emotion and associated memories. And on a less personal note, a well-staged and artistic photograph can evoke all sorts of powerful emotions in other people, in a way that only the most beautiful writing is likely to compete with.

Photography and video are highly expressive mediums that can condense a huge amount of meaning and significance into a single frame.

Photography can help you to notice and appreciate details you might otherwise have missed

One of the powers of photography is that it can help to draw your attention to features of your everyday life, environment, and experience that you would otherwise have completely overlooked and maybe failed to notice altogether.

When you get into photography and videography, you may naturally begin looking at rooms, natural landscapes, and beautiful times of day, in terms of “scenes” and art pieces. Suddenly, a walk in the park on a sunny day can take on new significance as you begin to pay more attention to the fascinating social dynamics that unfold between different birds and other animals. Or, maybe, the way the light streams through your bedroom window takes on a whole new form of aesthetic beauty and meaning to you.

Photography can remind you to view your own life as a great adventure and story

Since photography is, in one sense, all about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, and communicating a sense of beauty and significance through images, one side effect of it is that it can remind us to view our own lives as great unfolding adventures and stories. 

All too often, we get caught up in our day-to-day frustrations and the petty concerns of the moment, and lose track of the “bigger picture” where things seem imbued with deep meaning and significance.

Through documenting your life through photography, you can remind yourself that you are always in the process of living your own adventure.