I was recently in Spain when a funny thing happened. Well, I think it’s funny. I was at a popular observation point, at the top of a hill, when I asked an old Spanish lady to take my photo. I did that unhelpful thing that we all do when we don’t know how to ask for something in another language – I unwittingly started to remove some random words in the hope that it would make more sense when pared down. (It didn’t.) Thus: “Would you mind taking a photo of me?” became: “You…take…photo…me?”. It may surprise you to learn that my departure from syntactical sense did not result in the pictorial souvenir I had hoped for.

I persisted, this time re-arranging the words in the hope that they would somehow sound more Spanish: “Photo…you…me?” and then, “Take…you…photo…my?” and finally the only Spanish I could remember from GCSE “¿Dónde está la piscina?” We were the only two people on the viewing platform, hence my persistence, and this continued for some time until María (as I later learned she was called) eventually said: “Ahhh! I take your photo?” I beamed and, just as I was confirming that was indeed what I meant, she said “No” and walked off.

I recount this story because I was recently surprised to learn that every two minutes there are more photos taken than in the entire 19th century. Then I thought about it and realised that actually there weren’t that many photos taken in the 19th century because they didn’t have that many cameras. I mean, there were still a lot, but not as many as we have now. No, now a device isn’t seen as worth buying unless it has a camera on it. It happens with everything: phones, – Well, it’s mostly phones. But anyway.

Nonetheless, quite a startling statistic. And to be honest, I can hardly get all splenetic and haughty about it, seeing as, I daresay, I’m responsible for about 90 per cent of them. We all love to have a memory of big events in our life: that time we visited the Empire State Building, that squad trip to the beach in Corfu, or our kids’ first day at school. (Mum, if you’re reading this, don’t worry, I’m not a father – it’s just an example.) And given the fact we now always have some sort of photographic device on us at all times, capturing these special moments has never been easier. I’m starting to sound like an Apple advert. But all I’m saying is, it’s not all bad – it’s nice to be able to take photos every so often.

Case in point: my sister and I recently made a photo album for my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. In flicking through the carefully curated archive of their lives, played out in neatly affixed 35mm snapshots, it was touching to see their anthologised memories: their wedding day, for example, or the moment when they bought their first house, or – most emotionally – the day in 1979 when my father cut off his mullet. (On second thoughts maybe some things are best left un-photographed.) Sure, some were less interesting than others (‘Tony, the car rental man at the airport’ or ‘the garden furniture at the hotel’), but I guess if you’ve paid for the prints you want your money’s worth, so why not shove them in the album? Besides, there is something really quite interesting about a photo of the queue at the Vatican in 1982, isn’t there? No? Just my family then.

The key difference between then and now is the limitlessness of digital photography: no spool to reload, no film to run out – just a swipe left with your thumb and endless acres of the cloud ready to house your every snap.

When our children look through our photo albums, what, I wonder, will they ask? “Daddy, why are there 4,236 photos of you pouting with various sights of historical interest in the background?” Or “Mummy, why do we have seven leather-bound volumes chronicling solely photos of smashed avocado on toast?” Among these there’ll be the odd meme you saved, grainy videos of concerts you thought it would be sensible to film in full (never to be watched again) and a screenshot of a text containing directions which you forgot to delete. 

The sound of the underground? S Club and Steps

‘Story time’ will no longer be a dramatic reading of The Gruffalo, but rather a look through your parents’ favourite Snapchat posts. The National Portrait Gallery will be shut down and replaced with an Instagram account (heads-up: Holbein looks best with ‘Valencia’). Funeral Orders of Service, rather than being adorned with a timeless and touching headshot, will instead show a ‘puppy filter’ selfie with a number eight in the corner: Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Snapchat.

As I write this, flicking through the long-forgotten ‘memories’ on my phone which were diligently recorded by my past self for the benefit of my future self, my present self can’t help but wonder whether we should all just stop, or at least slow down. By all means still take photos – I’m not saying we tell the humble picture where to selfie-stick it – but perhaps stop trying to replicate everything we experience in 6x4 miniature. God knows it will be hard, and our Instagrams may suffer for it, but I think we can do this together. 

So thank you, María. You weren’t being difficult, you were saving me from a photographic deluge, and I admire you for speaking without restraint – or rather, I should say, #nofilter.