Friday, July 4, 2008

The Flip Side of Adventure

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Okay, so far I have been describing all the glorious details of travel abroad. Now I am going to share the B-side of the adventure. First of all adventure is a lot of damn work. Like writing this blog for instance! For all you wanna be Indiana Jones here´s the real deal:
First of all you have to be half crazy and maintain a high energy level to complete a project on the road. Especially a project which requires a half a dozen languages and an unpopular flag. For this project I am doing the following in each city: Still photography, text interviews, audio interviews, and shooting video. Each person also has to sign model releases. Although I have had guides/translators, I have to explain to them my working process and how to engage people on the streets. They also have to learn how to caption text and model releases, shoot video, and watch my back. The learning curve is huge but I´ve been lucky they catch on quickly.

Now the physical aspect: Each day I am usually out shooting by 11am and ending at dusk (7 or 8pm). I figure out which part of the city I want to shoot in, take public transportation to the area and begin walking. When I say walking, I mean consistently all day. If you stop, you begin to feel the pain. The pain comes from the bags on the shoulders, cameras around your neck, your feet throbbing, speaking to people all day, and the weather. I have grown nails, broken nails, and regrown nails. In London once the rain finally stopped I shot 17 people in one day. My feet were on the verge of blistering the next day. Don´t even mention hair....... My assistants who are generally male and female and 10-15 years younger than me are worn out by the third day of shooting. The third day. I´ve been doing this for two months!

The equipment issues: I have replaced 3 suitcases since I left London. My sneakers have ripped, my jeans have ripped, my tripod broke, my Yashica camera mysteriously broke and I am now using my ´back up´ Mamiya.

The travel: I responsible for all my travel itineraries, hotels, laundry etc. Sitting on a train for hours is great and horrible. Depending on which train and which country. For instance Italian trains don´t make announcements at stops. So if you didn´t just happen to notice the sign for the upcoming city (which is going by at 100km) you´re screwed!

Now after all of this I still have to smile, laugh, continue to take great photos, have a good time and write this damn blog! And just think, I only have two more countries to go before the end of August!

Happy trails!

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