a memory without revision

i don’t remember when i stopped editing my photos and videos.

it was not a grand decision. there was no particular day where i opened an editing app, stared at the screen, and dramatically decided that from now on i would live more honestly. life rarely changes in a cinematic way like that.

it happened slowly.

at first, i was just too lazy to raise the contrast. then too lazy to crop. then too lazy to choose a filter. then too lazy to fix the skin tone, the sky, the light, the horizon line, or any small thing that was considered distracting. over time, i realized it was not just laziness. i was beginning to lose the desire to rescue an image from itself.

and maybe, at some point, i was also beginning to lose the desire to rescue my life from its original shape.

i used to be a ui/ux designer. even now, my work still revolves around design. i know how to make something look more correct. i know how visuals are made cleaner, more modern, more expensive, more trustworthy. i know the latest trends. i know the latest aesthetics. i know when a layout starts to feel old, when a color begins to die, when a composition looks like a past that refuses to be buried.

i know how to make something look worth seeing.

maybe that is exactly why i have started to distrust everything that looks too worth seeing.

design taught me that beauty rarely arrives innocent. something that looks natural is often not natural at all. it has been arranged, balanced, saved from its own awkwardness. something that looks clean often means many things have been hidden. something that looks premium is often just the right font, the right spacing, a color that does not scream too loudly, and enough confidence to look expensive.

i don’t hate any of that. it is my work. i live inside it. i understand its language.

rhea once told me that design and art are two very, very different things.

and i mostly agree.

design is usually born with an intention: to make something clearer, easier to use, easier to trust, faster to understand. design has to think about other people. it has to be kind to the eyes, to the thumb, to habits, to goals.

art does not always have such polite obligations. sometimes art is born from the parts that are inefficient, unfriendly, unclean, and impossible to explain with any metric.

maybe that is why i can still love design as work, while refusing to surrender my whole life to the same logic.

maybe because i have understood design for too long, i have started to want a few small spaces that do not have to obey.

for example, stories.

i know that, from a ux perspective, a poll makes more sense in the bottom right. close to the thumb. easy to reach. more natural for interaction. kinder to the habits of modern humans holding their screens like small objects that must always bow to the body.

but i often put my polls in the upper left.

not because i don’t know.

because i know.

there is a strange satisfaction in placing something slightly wrong. not terribly wrong. not total chaos. just wrong enough to remind me that my story is not an app. not a dashboard. not a landing page. not a product waiting for its retention rate. not a funnel. not a conversion experiment. not something that has to be optimized until everyone can touch it without thinking.

sometimes i want a small thing to be a little harder to find.

sometimes i want my private space to keep one corner that is not user-friendly.

maybe that sounds ridiculous. but to me, it feels like a small act of sabotage against my own profession. not because i hate design, but because i do not want my entire life to become a design project.

i have spent enough time making things look correct for other people.

i do not want to do the same thing to all of my memories.

that is why, when i make a timelapse, i barely touch anything. whatever camera i have. whatever position i get. no crop. no stabilization. no color grading. no preset to make the evening look like an expensive perfume commercial. if the image shakes, let it shake. if the color is pale, let it be pale. if the sky that day is not dramatic enough, i do not want to force it to become more dramatic than itself.

i once recorded a sunset using a terrible laptop webcam.

the image was broken. the color was miserable. the details had almost no dignity. visually, it probably failed before it even began. there was nothing cinematic about it. no beautiful depth. no dynamic range worth bragging about. the sunset looked as if it had been forced into an old machine that did not have enough mercy to capture its beauty.

but strangely, that was exactly why i trusted it.

it did not have the strength to pretend to be beautiful.

there is something honest in a bad image. not honest because cameras cannot lie. of course cameras lie. lenses choose. sensors choose. framing chooses. even the decision to record something is already a small betrayal of reality. but there is a kind of lie that stays quiet, and there is a kind of lie that wears too much expensive perfume.

i am tired of the second one.

i am tired of seeing everything forced to appear as its best version. food has to look more tempting than it tastes. a room has to look tidier than the life of the person who lives in it. a face has to look fresher than the body carrying it. the sky has to be bluer. the sunset has to be more orange. sadness has to have a consistent color tone. even loneliness now seems to need good composition before it is allowed to be posted.

i know how to make all of that.

and maybe that is the problem.

i know how.

i know how to make visuals more acceptable. i know which parts need to be cut. i know which light needs to be saved. i know which colors should be pulled a little so they feel more alive. i know how to make something ordinary look as if it has artistic intention.

but the longer i live with it, the more i feel that not everything needs artistic intention.

some things are enough by simply happening.

a sky can be just a sky. a room can be just a room. a face can be just a face. a moment can be just a moment, even when it is bad, dull, broken, too bright on one side and too dark on the other.

i am tired of lying to myself.

not only about my face. not only about how i appear on camera. that is only a small part of something wider. i am tired of the quiet habit of making life look tidier than it actually is. tired of the small urge to keep improving the evidence that i was once there. tired of feeling as if a memory has to pass through curation before it is allowed to be saved.

if my face looks bad that day, then it looks bad. i am not ashamed. but that is not the point of all this.

the point is that i do not want to turn my own life into an object of optimization.

there is a soft violence in the desire to keep editing. at first, it is only a little. a little crop. a little contrast. a little color correction. a little cut to remove the distracting part. a little removal of the moment that was not beautiful. a little choice of the angle that forgives more. a little polishing of reality so it does not embarrass us too much.

little by little, life becomes a working file.

and i do not want my life to become a working file.

i do not want everything to have layers. i do not want everything to have a before and after. i do not want everything waiting for a final export. i do not want everything to pass through the question: is this good enough for people to see?

maybe that is why i like raw things.

not raw as a slogan. not raw as some fake honest style that will eventually become another aesthetic. not raw that is deliberately made rough so it can look more authentic. i am not trying to sell honesty as a new filter.

i only like things that have not apologized too much for their own shape.

noise. blur. dead colors. wrong exposure. a terrible webcam. a poll in the upper left. an uncropped video. an unoptimized story. a sunset that failed to become cinematic. all those small things give me a feeling i find difficult to explain: that something can still exist without having to win any standard.

maybe that is what i have been looking for.

not a beautiful image.

not a clean video.

not an optimized story.

only a small proof that i can still let something live without immediately fixing it.

because the world is already too full of hands that want to tidy things. too full of apps that want to beautify things. too full of systems that want to measure attention, organize thumbs, predict eyes, comfort users, remove friction, reduce strangeness. everything is asked to become easy, smooth, fast, clean, clickable, shareable, and pleasant to consume.

i understand that world.

i even work inside it.

but outside of work, i want to keep a little disorder for myself.

i want some things to remain bad.

not because i cannot make them good.

but because they were mine before they became good.

maybe one day i will edit again. maybe there will be a project, a job, or a particular reason that makes me open a timeline again, adjust the colors, cut the frame, fix the light. i am not making a sacred oath against editing. i am not pretending that raw is the purest form of truth.

i only know that, for now, i feel calmer looking at something that does not try too hard to convince me.

let the sky stay pale if that day was pale.

let the sunset from a terrible webcam remain a sunset from a terrible webcam.

let the poll stay in the upper left, slightly far from the thumb, slightly unfriendly, slightly annoying, like a small object refusing to become part of a system that is too neat.

let my video stay uncropped.

let the noise breathe.

let life arrive with its face unwashed.

because after spending too long learning how to make something look correct, i only want to keep a few things that do not need to look correct at all.

maybe that is all i want from my photos and videos now.

not beauty.

not polish.

not the best possible version of a moment.

just a memory without revision.

enough to be real.

enough to have happened.

enough to remain mine.

— luca invictus