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עבריתSome will say I take too many photographs in foreign countries. People who arrive in such beautiful places in the world, but instead of enjoying the place themselves, let their camera do it for them, lose a lot; maybe even ruin the experience they could have experienced. Those who take a video through their entire journey might document more but miss even more for themselves. That is the reason why I don’t see myself hanging around with a video camera. The only video I take is short video clips using a stills camera.
When you go on an organized tour, there’s no special reason for the extra photographs. You might take photographs of nice things you stumble upon, but the tour program, which you may get from your guide can tell you where and when you’ve been, how much time you spent in every place and how much you paid.
It is different when you are traveling by your own. Usually there’s no specific plan, and mostly you’re not limited with time. If you feel like it, you can stay more; even another day instead of going somewhere else. It’s all up to you. The value of the photographs plays a bigger part here; how can you remember when and where you’ve been? If you want to tell your story in the future, you may not be able to because you’re the only one who’ve been through this experience.
Pictures can give us not only the documentation of a fabulous place, a landscape in the subnet, architectural or local culture photography. There’s also hidden information that may help us restore days and things we’ve done, only because of the landmark that we’ve documented, reminding us of our original route.
The EXIF format lies inside a JPEG file. It’s some sort of information library saved inside a photograph by the camera; it gives us answers like exposure time, image quality, etc, but not only that. As long as you take care to synchronize the date and time of the camera when you go to other countries, you can use this information to restore an entire journey months after it has ended. The human’s mind work associatively. A series of pictures combined with date and time can reconstruct your experience by investigating the place against the time in the day.
Other uses for photographs
Pictures can remind us how a certain place looks at day or night time. Sometimes the same place looks completely different when it’s dark.
When you arrive at a site, and there’s a trails map hanging in the entrance, all you have to do is take one shot. Later you can view this map using the zoom button of your camera to see how to get from one spot to another. That way you can remember in the future which places you visited by observing the map that you’ve taken.
If you have a travelers book. For example, Lonely Planet; inside the book there are explanations, maps and other information that you wish to take with you, but that book is too big and heavy. Again your camera plays an important role. Take copies of the relevant pages and you save carrying a heavy book. It’s true, not always it’s convenient reading through a tiny camera screen, but it’s better than nothing. I’ve found myself taking a few pages out of a book of a traveler that I met during a trek. Those pages included guidance about that trek. I left my own book at the guesthouse, so the information was very valuable for me.
Did you do anything unique? Take a photo! Even when you can’t take a photograph of yourself, take a photo of the place, the sign or something that might remind you in the future what you’ve done. Especially during a long journey, a lot is forgotten; every piece of documentation may remind you in a few years your exciting experience after it’s long forgotten.
All these photographs, knowledge pictures, do not have to be saved in high quality. Moreover, take them in low quality. It would be good enough for you when you want to publish it on the internet. Just don’t forget to restore the original setting after you’re done.
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