Travel begins even before you reach your destination. You pack your dear companions: your toothbrush, tennis shoes, your favourite Florence and the Machine t-shirt for those grumpy moments when all you wish for is the smooth cotton touch against your skin...and your camera.
This time I made the bold decision of leaving it behind. It wasn’t easy and I’m sure I will miss it many times over the next few days. But the plain truth is, I didn’t feel like carrying it around. It’s not just a matter of weight. A camera, a proper camera, is meant to take pictures. If you have it by your side, you’ll inevitably want to use it. And in order to use it, you must look at what surrounds you through its lenses. Your perception of the world changes, because you’re not using your “default” eyes, your human eyes version 1.0, you’re keeping them busy with angles, light, colour, framing...And then you end up missing a fabulous detail while making all those choices. So, New York being a city of skyscrapers and me being someone prone to obsessions, I decided to depart just with my iphone camera, a beautiful tool and totally unable to take photographs from a long distance. That way, I will have to focus on the details, on passersby, on street movement, on all those things that never feature on tourist guides.
We’ll see how this voluntary and temporary photographic short-sightedness turns out. :-)
