There's this question whether or not to take photos of an event you're part of and how doing so will affect your memory of it. Tyler Cowen says that if you do take photos you'll remember the event more vividly because you're stopping and noticing things. Andrew Sullivan thinks your experience of the event is more authentic if you're living it in the present and not worrying about storing it for the future.
I don't know about taking photos, something I hardly ever do, but from a comparable activity, namely, taking (or not taking) notes on an event, in order to write about it, I'd say that neither of these generalizations can be sustained. There's no single right way of being 'in the moment'; Andrew's suggestion that you could be there 'without mediation' doesn't make sense. You're seeing it from where you are and this affects what you see and what you fail to. Think only how, with football, seeing a goal again on TV that you've already seen at the game can reveal something about it that you missed. Your 'raw' experience of it wasn't necessarily the more accurate one. As Tyler points out, your view is bound to be mediated in some way (which is not to say that every view or account is as good as every other).
At the same time, even if it is true that recording the event - taking photos, taking notes - while you're there obliges you to pay attention in a way you otherwise might not, it doesn't always follow that your memory of it will be more vivid. The process of recording can itself get in the way of observing with full concentration. It can also happen that the record you have made itself becomes your memory of it, displacing images or aspects that might otherwise have remained with you.