A study says taking photos to remember a trip may have a catch and one museum experiment offers a surprising twist

You arrive at a beautiful palace and immediately reach for your phone. Every room seems worth photographing. By evening, your gallery is full. Later, someone asks about a carving near the entrance. You remember taking its picture.

Describing it is harder. Photographing something does not automatically strengthen your memory of it. Research suggests the outcome can depend on how taking a picture changes your attention.

What did the museum photography study find?

Psychologist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University investigated the question in research published in Psychological Science in 2014. Participants toured an art museum. They were instructed to photograph certain objects and simply observe others.


Photographing whole objects was followed by poorer memory for the objects and their details. Henkel called the pattern the photo-taking impairment effect. However, zooming in to photograph a specific feature removed the disadvantage. Memory was preserved even for features outside the close-up.

The result concerns performance on particular memory tasks. It does not establish that taking holiday photographs damages your overall memory.

Why might relying on a camera affect remembering?

One proposed explanation is cognitive offloading. Psychologists Evan Risko and Sam Gilbert reviewed the concept in 2016. It describes using actions or external resources to reduce a task’s mental demands.

Writing a shopping list is an everyday example. You no longer need to keep every item in mind while walking around the supermarket.

A photograph can similarly provide an external record. You may expect the image to preserve information you would otherwise try to remember.

Offloading can be useful. A saved photograph may contain details that memory alone would miss. The question is whether relying on that record changes how carefully you process the original scene. The offloading explanation is plausible, but it does not fully account for every photography finding.

Can taking a photograph interrupt attention?

Psychologists Julia Soares and Benjamin Storm examined the impairment effect in a 2018 paper, Forget in a Flash. Participants remembered less after photographing images even under conditions where the photographs were not retained. Deleting the pictures did not remove the effect.

The result challenged the idea that people remembered less solely because they expected to consult saved photographs. Soares proposed attentional disengagement as one possibility. Operating the camera may pull attention away from processing the subject.


Imagine looking at a painting, then concentrating on removing glare from your screen. You are still facing the artwork. Your attention has shifted towards completing the photograph.

The example illustrates a possible mechanism, rather than something directly established for every traveller.

What is a metacognitive illusion?

Metacognition concerns how we judge our own thinking and knowledge. Soares also suggested that photography could create a metacognitive illusion. Capturing an image may make someone feel they have learned more about the subject than they actually have.

Consider photographing a museum information board. Having its words stored on your phone does not necessarily mean you understood them.

A useful distinction is between possessing a record and remembering its contents. The proposed illusion concerns confusing those achievements. It remains an explanation to investigate, rather than a settled cause of the effect.

Why did zooming in change the result?

Henkel suggested that focused photography engaged additional attention and mental processing. Choosing a particular feature requires looking closely. A visitor photographing one carved flower may examine its shape before pressing the button.

The finding suggests that taking a photograph can involve different levels of engagement. It does not mean using the zoom button guarantees a better memory on every trip.

Can photography sometimes improve memory?

Yes. A 2017 paper by Alixandra Barasch and colleagues found that people allowed to choose their photographs recognised more visual information, but remembered less auditory information.

The findings suggest a shift in attention towards what people see. A visitor might remember an exhibit’s appearance while missing part of the guide’s explanation.

Photography can therefore influence which parts of an experience are remembered. It does not always make memory worse.