In order to bring you this next series of videos, we have surrendered to becoming something I hate – the people who take pictures of everything. I’ve always wondered why people take so many pictures or video on their trips abroad. No one wants to look at 20 pictures of one church or sunset, and another 10 of the food (one will suffice) or group photos. And If you’ve ever had a picture viewing party after you return, thinking your friends would enjoy sitting through 3 hours of photos from your recent vacation, you are wrong. Never do it again. Yet as we finish up our first trip on the road, I’m finding myself to be worse than even the most thorough tourist. And it’s not just views that we take pictures of, it’s … everything. I have especially fallen hard into the instagram cliche of taking pictures of my food. Not only that, but because we do video, it’s worse. Let me share the scenario. Walk into a restaurant, ask the the waiter if we can take pictures, walk back out of the restaurant and film walking in. Sit down, order. Try to take some sneaky shots of people eating their food. When our’s comes – try to capture the waiter delivering it. Then, reenact the setting down of the plate with a closeup. Take a picture or two of it with our fancy camera. Take a picture with our phones (tweet it). Then eat — oh God I want to kill myself!! Or rather, i just want to eat my food, or look at that sunset without the need to time lapse it.
Ok, I know, I’m complaining about getting to do cool stuff around the world. I’m doing this so that I can share my experience with folks who aren’t in Japan or China. And Im getting to tell cool stories of people doing great things. So I’ve taken a new attitude of surrender — Im tying to enjoy the process of capturing. It’s not necessarily about documenting the moment, it’s about creating art, trying to best capture an image or a feeling, it’s about working hard at your job. But instead of saying, wouldn’t this day have been better without needing to film it, the challenge of filming it well is as enjoyable as the experience… or at least that’s what I’m going for.
