Take Photos, Be Happy.

Mike Tyson reveals a tech secret to making yourself happier: take lots of photos.

As far as the types of pictures you should take? Anything. It doesn’t have to be artistic or taken with any grand purpose. But you should use photography as a way to simply document even the most slightly unique things you see in your world whether they’re visual curiosities, a funny moment, you eating somewhere new, the arrangement of clouds in the sky… anything. And what you’ll find when you start sorting through your photographs, you actually will have an opportunity to recount all of these minor fleeting moments which you may would otherwise have forgotten.

I fully endorse this advice. Any camera will do.

Ever since I got my iPhone 3G a few years ago, I’ve been snapping photos whenever the urge strikes. The quality of the iPhone 4’s camera has turned picture-taking into an easy and enjoyable hobby, and the iPhone 4S’s camera is even better. People often say, “The best device is the one you have with you”, and that’s certainly true for cameras. My iPhone 4 is always in my pocket, so I can capture a quality photo whenever and wherever I want.

But rather than make this another OMG-the-iPhone-is-so-great post, I want to emphasize Mike’s point about documenting your life. That’s exactly the way I treat the camera roll on my iPhone: it’s like one big photo album of my life. I have pictures dating back to right after I graduated college, and I have pictures of the pork and mushrooms I ate for dinner tonight. Calm down; just one. I like food photography.

The point is, I can flick through these photos and remember exactly what I was thinking or feeling when I took them, and that makes me happy. Like Mike says, these are moments I probably would have forgotten. Instead, I’ve documented in pictures the past three years of my life. The 1,814 pictures I have on my iPhone are really 1,814 memories I can revisit whenever I please.