Courtesy of Ryan Parkhurst
A presence to my right disrupts my contemplation and, as I turn in that direction, I see my professor’s big, black camera in my face. Caught off guard, I give him a glaring death stare (according to him) and turn back to my musings.
As my travel companions quickly realized, I’m not a huge fan of having my picture taken. Perhaps it’s my reserved personality, 15 years of embarrassing school portraits or my journalistic tendencies to record — and not participate in — the action, but I definitely prefer to be behind the camera.
That might explain why I have very few pictures of myself out of the more than 2,600 photos I took over the span of three weeks in London and Scotland. I certainly had my camera with me for almost every moment of my trip; I just had my eye to the lens.
There have been billions of pictures taken of St. Paul’s Cathedral, for instance. Many of these are of a much better quality than what my amateur photography skills were able to produce. In fact, I found a good deal for one — on a postcard costing 20 pence at a souvenir shop on Portobello Road in Notting Hill. Still, I have upwards of 75 pictures of St. Paul’s, and that’s just of the outside.
And yet, none of those photos compare to what can be seen and felt inside of the cathedral, where no photography is allowed. The glowing-faced cherubs and pious saints depicted on the mosaics of the Quire are permanently seared into my brain. The golds, reds, blues and purples meld together forming Biblical scenes. The Dome reaches up so high, as if linking earth with the heavens above, until the paintings are just blurry images beyond my power of sight.
The juxtaposition of the minute and the colossal engulf me. There’s both an uneasiness associated with the feeling that I’m just a miniscule blip on the cosmic radar and a peacefulness thinking that there’s more to the world than my petty concerns. A camera can’t capture those feelings. It can’t capture that smell of incense and candles or those chills from being in a place of sanctity, silence and reverence.
So, perhaps my camera is not so significant.
It might make more sense to snap a few photos and then spend the rest of the time taking in the scene without being separated from it by a box of metal, plastic and glass. My eyes can do much better justice to a sight than a 1-by-1.5-inch viewing screen.
Plus, I can always Google a picture later.
Now that I’m home, everyone I run into asks me the same question: “How was your trip?”
To describe my trip in just a few words seems impossible and inadequate. I spent three weeks in two different countries encountering experiences and sights new — and literally foreign — to me every day. Where could I possibly start? I usually just reply, “It was amazing. I loved it there.”
Silence follows — like you-can-hear-crickets-chirping-in-the-background silence — accompanied by a half-puzzled, half-annoyed look signaling the question, “Michelle, is that really all you’re going to give me?”
“Go online, read my blog and look at my pictures,” I want to demand. “Then, come back with a list of specific questions. I will answer those.”
In a Facebook nation, however, where the longevity of the average American’s attention span lasts only a few seconds, no one is going to view my 21 photo albums comprising 2,672 photos. No one is going to spend hours sifting through my shots of vistas, monuments, castles and landscapes.
They want stories.
They want to hear about what I liked and what I disliked. They want to hear about what inspired me. They want to hear about my adventures.
They want to hear about how I got lost in London at midnight trying to find a nightclub
… how I ate a delicious crepe bigger than my head
… how I got my jeans ripped by a middle-aged Scottish man
… how I unsuccessfully tried to summon Nessie from the depths of Loch Ness
… how I earned the nickname Clumsiness
… how I fed Hamish, the hairy coo.
Yes, they want stories. They want proof that I was there, in the flesh, living life and not just taking touristy photos of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. They want to know what I was doing when I neglected to pull my camera out of my bag. My pictures won’t mean much to them, because they weren’t there to experience those moments in the first place.
Of course, those pictures mean a lot to me, in that, 20 years from now, I hope they’ll help me remember some of those moments. Yet, those three weeks changed my thoughts, my goals and my life. They want to know why, and my pictures can’t tell that story for me.
Upon returning to London from Edinburgh, I lean, weighed down by my florescent orange camping backpack, against the Plexiglas wall separating the seating from the standing room on the tube. I feel a light poke against my arm, so I look to my left.
A man, about 35 years of age, sits in the seat next to where I’m standing. He wears blue jeans and an eggshell-colored sweater that complements his tan skin tone. He has slick, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail — Antonio Banderas style. A little blond girl — the culprit — with striking blue eyes stands on his lap. Dressed in pink pants and a light pink, floral shirt, the toddler waves and says, “Hi.”
I smile and wave back. She’s precious. Every time the tube car stops, she waves and says goodbye to those getting off, to those staying on and, really, to anyone and everyone. The two get off at the station before mine, and she waves over her father’s shoulder to the remaining passengers as he carries her out in his arms.
This is such a moment in which one’s camera is useless. Firstly, one could justifiably be arrested for pulling out a camera and unwarrantedly shooting photos of this little girl. Secondly, this moment isn’t composed of a building or landmark one can freeze in a frame. It’s a scene — a little intricacy of life — that only can be stored away within the confines of my memory until the next time I’m in need of an endearing anecdote.
That’s what my family and friends are looking for.
Happily, I can give it to them.
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