I hate selfies, so whenever I'm on vacation I just take pictures of my surroundings but never with me in it. Once, my cousin wanted to see my vacation pics, so I showed them to him. He then asked why I'm not in any of them. When I said I didn't think it was necessary, his genuine confused reply was, "But how do people know you were really there, then?"
I'm the same when I'm going on a vacation with my parents! I want to have as much memories captured with them as possible... But it's only when I'm with them lol. I usually go to vacations solo, and the pictures without me is still memories to me--even if it's a bad picture and not professional quality, it's still something I saw and experienced myself. Like maybe my sunset picture I took is crooked or too dark etc, but when I see it I remember the moment I was there; it captured exact hue of the sky that I saw, the birds that I was watching earlier, the clouds that I thought looked like a Pokemon and made me smile. The better pictures that other people took do not have that, so for me personally, it's not a wasted effort.
The other day I was looking at my solo vacation pictures from 10, 15 years ago without me in them, and the memories are still with me.
Anyway, I think that although we take them differently, we both agree that vacation pictures should be for our memories, and not for "showing other people that we were REALLY there" (as my cousin said, haha...)
Please be satire ( sh.itjust.works )