This TED Talk features travel photographer and writer Aaron Sullivan, recorded live at TED Salon Crossover 2019.

What is the most beautiful place you have ever been? And when you were there, did you take a picture of it?

Here's a place that tops that list for me.

This is Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park in Utah at Sunrise.

It's the traditional homeland of the Pueblo, Ute, Paiute, and Navajo people.

And when you are there, it is absolutely stunning.

The sunrise illuminates the bottom of the arch orange, and then behind it,

you see these beutes and clouds and cliffs. But what you might not see is the 30 people behind me

who are also taking photos. And these are just the committed people, the sunrise people, right?

So when you think about that, there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of photos of Mesa Arch

taken every week. I've been sharing my photography on Instagram for years, and it started to

become really interesting and funny even, just how many similar photos of the same places I started

to see online. And I was participating in it.

So this made me wonder,

why are we taking photos in the first place?

Sometimes I visit a popular landmark,

and I see all the people with their phones and cameras out

who snap a photo just to turn and get back in the car

or walk back to the trailhead.

And sometimes it seems like we are missing the point of going to this place to experience it for ourselves or to see it with our own eyes.

When I'm behind the camera, I notice the smallest details, the layers of light in the mountains as the light fades at the end of the day,

the shapes that nature so expertly makes, abstract and yet completely perfect.

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