Why travel

A question which has been asked, and answered by many writers far more talented than I. Yet, I feel it necessary to revisit this question for myself, if not for my readers, as we make the final preparations for this extended trip.

Grand Central Station, NYC, July 2013

Back in the days when I traveled extensively for business (not as extensively as some, but more extensively than most) the motivation was clear: there was work to be done. Travel was organized to be as efficient as possible. I got the airport at the last minute (with an adequate time buffer), got to the hotel or office from the airport quickly, had meetings arranged from morning till evening, and left the office from my last meeting to go straight back to the airport. It was a rare trip when I had time for sightseeing or entertainment, unless you consider dinner with colleagues or sitting in a hotel bar entertainment.

People engage in personal or recreational travel for all kinds of reasons.

They may want to see or experience a specific, unique thing or place which interests them. Anyone who lives in a major city such as New York or London is acutely aware of the presence of tourists, who have come to see and experience their city. Places like national parks are almost exclusively devoted to tourists of one sort or another. Fishing, skiing, or beach vacations are structures around specific activities which one cannot do in their hometown, or in their everyday life.

I understand that there are people who are able to combine business travel with recreational travel, but as I said, it has been a rare occasion for me.

Prior to retiring, whenever Sally and I traveled for pleasure my strong preference to go someplace and stay there for the duration. This was, of course, a direct reaction to the style of business travel, which was consumed by the travel portion and very tightly scheduled. In a Go & Stay vacation, your travel is limited to the beginning and end. This also means your scheduling is probably limited to the needs of the few travel days, and you are extremely flexible on the other days. Many people will comment that part of the enjoyment of their vacation is the lack of a schedule or that they don't need to set an alarm clock.

Sally, on the other hand, like to go places and still does. Many times, the places she likes to go are around the hotels or other accommodations that she chooses for us. In fact, one could characterize her activity as "staying in exceptional hotels and inns". But the point is that while I was inclined to unpack and stay in one place, she exhibited the restlessness of the explorer to get on to the next exciting hotel and experience it in it's fullest.

Since my so-called retirement, I'm more inclined to appreciate the trip which is all travel. Go somewhere, stay a couple of days, move on to the next place. In my case, the activity is not the hotel as it is for Sally, but rather the experience of the location. And photography.

Many people have written a great many words about photography, which is kind of interesting if you think about it. Photography is all about the image, and using words to describe of explain the image might seem strange. On the other hand, while I am often just taken aback by an image, I also greatly enjoy the captions which the artist assigns to them. The image above, for instance, could have easily been titled "People In Motion". Using the more straightforward and obvious title as I did says something about how I expect the viewer to relate to the image.

None of which has anything to say about photography and it's relationship to travel, recreational or otherwise. Rather, I think part of it is encapsulated by a quote from Dorothea Lange, the Great Depression-era documentary photographer: "A camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera". I would add, that for me, a camera is an instrument that helps me see, because I find myself looking for images that might be worth capturing with it. And it is this looking that has become part of the experience and enjoyment I get from travel.

Palmetto Bluffs, SC, October 2013

Landscape photography, like all skills, is one that thrives from practice and repetition. Some teachers will tell you that the key to landscape photography (as well as it's close relative of urban and cityscapes) is visiting the same location over and over, understanding how it looks at different times of day, in different seasons, and different weather. Ansel Adams' images are great, in part, because we only see the best of a series of a single scene that he may have studied and photographed over a period of 40 years, until he felt he could truly understand and capture it.

By traveling, of course, you probably give up the opportunity to engage in this long term study of a single scene. Rather, you fall back on the Lange vision of perceiving more acutely as you try and make sense of the scene in preparation for the creation of a photograph. The Palmetto Bluffs scene above was the result of a couple of days of walking around this area, getting out early in the day when the weather happened to be ideal with just enough clouds in the sky to be interesting, and making the image. If I had just walked by once, it would be unlikely that I would have gotten this lovely image.

So how does this tie back to travel, and the motivations?

Frankly, I've travelled enough, and to enough places, that seeing yet another very old European walled city, or Mediterrainian Sea-side village, isn't all that interesting (I started counting, and I'm up to more than 40 countries and almost 40 states & territories). We'll see three more countries on this trip, which doesn't add a lot to the total quantity or the totality of unique things.

But ... I think that bringing my camera, and looking for pictures, will enable me to see things that perhaps others won't see or that I haven't seen. Really studying a scene - trying to understand what it is about that scene that strikes me somehow - lets me see more than I've seen before.

And that's why I travel.

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans