A picture of a guy taking a picture of St. Paul's
Random Observation/Comment #148: If there is one advice for the obsessive photographer, it would be to bring an external hard drive for prolonged visits. Without mine, I would definitely not make it through this 6-month journey, let alone 2 months. The 320GB Western Digital Passport has been ideal in every respect. I don’t use it without plugging-in my laptop, so I’m not sure how the lack-of-a-power-supply feature drains the laptop’s batteries, but I must say that the size is incredible/convenient/incredibly convenient (It’s only a few cm in each dimension larger than my iPhone). It might be a little slow for transferring large amounts of legal music (ehem), but I have not seen a significantly noticeable slow-down for streaming movies stored externally. For $90, it was a great buy*.
The pictures on my Facebook profile will have some… descriptive (for the lack of a better word)… descriptions and tell a bit of the story. Unfortunately, the 1600 photos that I’ve taken so far (I’ve only been here 5 days) will take quite some time to upload onto albums (I need to upload 20 albums [60 photos each]). After this remark, I expect some surprised faces and “daayuumm’s”, but I know that my parents and brother read this news and react with a slightly dismissive headshake. In fact, it’s incorrect to even label this as news – it’s more like a given variable; nay, it’s as well accepted as π or ε0 (permittivity of free space, in case you were wondering). If I do not meet the quota of pictures, they would probably be concerned that I had fallen ill for the day. They couldn’t even imagine uncharged batteries or accidentally leaving the camera at home because they know I wear the wrist strap (with the camera attached to it) as a fashion accessory. This camera effectively replaces my cell phone. Maybe now that I’ve revealed this nugget of information, this obsession is more understandable, or at least, less weird – okay, it’s still weird.
The picture-taking-bit is not my purpose for traveling, but it does give me something to do while I’m making my observations. It’s become more than a habit – it’s an addiction. I remember everything I do without the photography, but it really does take less effort to press a button than write the thousands of words required to describe the photo. Given the number of photos I’ve taken, I’d be writing forever – I’m not describing pictures and I already feel like I’ll be writing forever.
What if I didn’t have a camera? *Shudders* I’ve had nightmares with this exact same theme. Well, it’s not as bad as the one about the giant camera chasing me with his flash replaced by laser beams, but it’s up there. Now that I actually consider the situation of leaving the camera at home, I would probably use my notebook a little more frequently and I’d definitely become a better sketch artist. In general, this obsession does not control me. I CAN fight it – well, sort of.
~See Lemons Addicted
*I was not paid to do this as an advertisement.
I'm a bit addicted...
