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| River scene, Cambodia |
After four extended trips since 2008, that have taken me to
America and Greece three times, France, twice, and England and Cambodia once
each (as well a two week visit to Sydney, and six or seven month-long visits to
Melbourne, Australia), I had amassed an enormous number of photographs and
videos.
How many? More than 35,000 (4,000 of which are video clips).
No, that larger figure is not a typo. Thirty-five thousand! Since my return in
August from my last trip to Greece and France, I have spent more hours than I
care to think about slowly going through my files and folders culling as many
extraneous images as possible. I am now down to around 22,000 files. A few of
them are now illustrating this post.
When I mentioned the number of files on my Facebook page,
and wrote about the task of sorting through and deleting the doubles and the
duds, one of my acquaintances left the following comment: “You can take so
many pics you don't see anything.”
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| Largs Bay sunset, Adelaide |
To which I replied, in part: “You are right of course…one
of the problems/benefits of modern digital cameras is that they make it easy to
take thousands of photographs, unlike the old 'analog' cameras that restricted
you to shooting a maximum of 36 photos per roll of film.”
And therein lies the problem―or part of it. Modern digital
cameras do in deed make it too easy to take hundreds, and even thousands of
photographs. Older cameras, with their restrictive 12, 24, or 36 image rolls of
film, forced photographers to be a lot more careful and choosy about the
photographs they took, and the way they captured them. Because of these
limitations, photographers spent a lot more time setting up and composing ‘the
shot’, making sure aperture, f-stops, and ISO settings where just right. Even
then, until they had a chance to get their rolls of film developed, often weeks
later, there were no guarantees that the final results would be what they
wanted.
Thankfully, digital cameras have freed us from many of these
issues, providing us with the ability to quickly see if our images are good,
and if not, to immediately keep shooting until we are satisfied with the
results. Digital cameras also make it easy to shoot dozens of photographs of
the same object, all in a matter of minutes, or even seconds. Obviously, given
this ease of use, it doesn’t take long to accumulate hundreds (or thousands) of
photographs, especially during long extended trips.
Stop And Smell The Roses
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| View from Koskina Castle, Ikaria |
But there was something else bothering me about that
Facebook comment. Hidden in my friends response is the implied criticism that
many modern travellers (including myself), are so busy taking photographs that
we don’t stop to truly see and appreciate the things we are trying to capture
on film or video. And he is right.
I personally, am well aware of this potential problem, and
always try to allow time to just sit and look, to observe and contemplate, and
to find space in my travels to be grateful for the opportunities I have had
that brought me to a specific location, at that particular period in my life
and journey. This is probably the major reason I like to travel for extended
periods involving months rather than weeks. It is also the reason I have
returned, two, three and even more times to countries and cities I have
previously visited.
There are a lot of travellers who are intent on visiting as
many countries as they possibly can, simply so they can boast about the number
of places they have been to. Getting to know the people and the customs and
culture of the countries they visit, is not why these people travel. They are
simply collecting stamps in passports, and those ubiquitous, “This is me in…”
photographs.
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| Bastille Monument, Paris |
I never have been, nor will I ever be that type of
traveller.
Living In ‘The Moment’
In my reply I also wrote: “One of my travel fantasies
involves travelling with no camera at all, but I don't know if that is ever
going to happen.”
While there have been days during my travels when I have
chosen to leave my camera behind at my accommodations, I doubt that I will ever
have the confidence in my aging memory banks to not have a camera at all for
the duration of a trip. And while I understand the concept of ‘living in the
moment’, of trying to focus all my senses on what is going on around me at any
particular moment in time, there is also a joy and pleasure in trying to record
and capture those moments in a more tangible and permanent form.
We live in an age when literally billions of images have
been uploaded to dozens of popular photo sharing sites such as Flickr,
Instagram, 500px, Pinterest, and many others. In the time it has taken you to
read this far, several million images will have been uploaded to Facebook
alone.
The other factor I did not mention is that I have travelled
extensively since rekindling my travel bug in 2008. In fact I even surprised
myself when I added up the weeks and months I have ventured overseas.
- March 11, 2008 - October 5, 2008 [seven months]
- June 29, 2010 - March 7, 2011 [eight months]
- July 30, 2012 - October 24, 2012 [three months]
- April 28, 2014 - August 20, 2014 [four months]
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| Water Tower, Sydney |
This is a total of around 22 months of travel outside
Australia. And this does not include approx six month's house sitting in Melbourne
over the past six or seven years, or the two weeks I spent in Sydney in 2009.
All this travel adds up to almost 30 months away from ‘home’ since March 2008.
Thirty months ‘on the road’ presents a heck of a lot of opportunities for
taking thousands of photographs―and take them I did.
How many photographs are too many? Can you in fact, take too
many photographs during your travels? Does the world really need another image
of the Eiffel Tower, or the Empire State Building, or other well known landmark?
I’d love to know what readers think about this issue. Please
feel free to leave your thoughts in the Comments section below.
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