China 2007

Why do I walk around lugging a giant, several-pound camera that will hardly fit in any bag? And why do I pay so much of my attention to it? I don't think it's my lack of sociability or dislike for a foreign atmosphere. It's a comfort, to be sure, but not a necessary one. Everybody in our groups carries a recording device of some kind. One's mother will never send her son or daughter on a trip halfway around the world, and then say, "You can forget a camera." I don't want to feel like a stupid tourist, is the thing. I want to record what's going on. I wan't to capture what I have seen through my own eyes, and perhaps try to enlighten others who haven't seen such images ever before - thought that's quite hard to effectively pass on. I want to show things how they are, the truest picture from the most aesthetic perspective, and get a lot of it from a lot of places. I take pride in the facts that I'm never there to intrude with a flash, that my batteries/tapes last comparatively forever so I'm not constantly changing them, and I don't obsess over tourist spots. Sometimes they're necessary, but I enjoy diversity.

I've always been told to take as much footage as necessary, so the bad stuff can be thrown away in postproduction. Still, I like to review my pictures and video right away, critiquing the fine points and scolding myself for stupid mistakes: like thinking I'm recording when the camera is stopped, and letting it record at all other times. I have already ruined a portion of my Great Wall footage by doing that.

But back to the subject at hand: why I expend so much effort on something that isn't really necessary. I could be looking out the bus windown right now, soaking up the blue-and-yellow-striped apartment buildings ascending hundreds of feet, or the winding, marshy river under the bridge. Why does that need to be on a tape, when it can be found anywhere on the internet, in a pamphlet, or on somebody else's camera. Why bother, why follow the actions of the masses? It's China, to be sure... but the colors and perfect moments captured on the big screen will never exist right in front of us. Even the glory of the Great Wall was diminished in person. Maybe, just maybe - this gives me a chance to relive my footstep, the memories that weren't even mine, and make the sights and sounds seem better than they ever, once did.