During our online discussion about how being focused on one’s phone or camera can distract from fully participating in an experience, a listener brought up the term chimping. As we’ve noted before, chimping refers to fiddling with the buttons on a digital camera and checking the screen after taking a photograph, much like a chimpanzee fooling with whatever it finds on the ground. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Chimping” Means Checking Photos Instead of Watching the Shot”
There were so many interesting comments in the Facebook discussion that we were talking about earlier about overshadowing, you know, where you’re not completely present for an event, like you’re paying too much attention to your phone during an eclipse or something like that.
And one of the things that somebody mentioned was the term chimping. You probably already know this term, Grant. That’s funny. That came to me earlier when we were talking about this. Yes, I think I have citations for chimping on our website.
Chimping is when you’re messing with the buttons and settings on your phone, but not looking at the subject that you’re supposed to be photographing. You’re spending more time looking at the photographs you just took instead of taking more photographs.
Yes. And this may have originated among photojournalists who are using high-end fancy cameras that have the screen on the back, and they’re actually having to look down at their phone and check photos to make sure that they don’t need to make adjustments. But we all do it at every level, right? We look to see if it works and see if we need to make tweaks to it and don’t trust our devices and our previous settings.
Yeah, and apparently the idea is you’re holding the camera or the phone out in front of you with your elbows kind of out, kind of like a chimp looking at the phone or the camera.
Well, also, but if you’ve ever seen these videos of chimps that they’ve got something they’re not quite supposed to have, something that a human left in their zoo enclosure maybe, and they’re really curious. And they turn it about and look at it strangely. I look at it on all sides. They’re as curious as humans, and they puzzle it out.
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