Too slow. That’s what I was thinking as I scanned the crowd at Cedarcrest High School’s graduation ceremony last Friday. Austin Jenckes had just come on stage for a surprise musical performance for the students. He was getting set up, just about ready to sing, and I was not in position for the photo I wanted to get. I knew it would be there, just didn’t know where, and I knew I didn’t have a lot of time.

I was right, on both counts. The photo was just a few rows back from the stage — two girls in caps and gowns, using their mobile phones to record Jenckes — and it was there for only a minute. Before long, the two had stashed their phones and were simply enjoying the performance, which they had apparently been promised in 2006 when Jenckes was graduating from Cedarcrest.

It was a memorable moment, worthy of recording, but also worthy of experiencing. It got me thinking about some of my own memorable moments, both with and without a camera — yes, I sometimes put it down — and how the experience is changed when filtered through a lens.

Although I’m a firm believer in the old saying that 98 percent of statistics are made up on the spot, I also believe the “they” who say that we don’t remember things as well when we photograph or film them, because we are photographing or filming them. On a recent whale-watching trip we took with Puget Sound Express, the guide repeatedly encouraged us to put down the cameras and just watch the orcas and grey whales for a few minutes. He called it “taking mental photographs,” and, of course, those are always sharp and well-lit.

The whales were spectacular, and my photos didn’t even come close to the ones the tour company had, or even the ones a friend took the next day on the same tour. None of those photos, though, could touch the memory of the sun, the saltwater smell, the wind and the excitement of seeing, just for a second through the crowd standing on deck, the orca that surfaced about 15 feet from our boat.

Another thing that just isn’t the same recorded is music. Buddy Guy taught me that. I’ve watched him for years in live shows, trying to guess where in the crowd he would suddenly appear, playing full-tilt on his guitar. I’ve visited his Legends in Chicago, and wondered if that guy sitting alone at the bar might not just have a guitar somewhere handy.

Recently, I read his autobiography, and discovered that he was a fairly regular session player for Chess Records, playing backup and doing all he could to blend in and make the featured artist look good. The only time he did his thing, that crazy, Buddy Guy, anything-to-please-the-crowd, walking in mid-song from the street or the bathrooms thing, was in live shows.

If you were looking into your camera view-finder at a Buddy Guy show, you missed the show.

So, I got a photo of the Cedarcrest girls. I didn’t get “the” photo, the perfect one in my mind, that I might have gotten if I hadn’t been too slow, or if they’d just filmed him a little longer.

That’s OK, because I think they got much more than just a recording.