[Kenneth Patchen]

This from tonight's NewsHour:

RUSSELL BANKS, Author: One way to distinguish a tourist from a traveler is that a tourist carries a camera or a phone and takes pictures with one or both. A traveler carries no camera and uses his or her phone mainly to make occasional phone calls home or when lost for the GPS.

I used to carry a camera when I traveled, but almost never took any pictures with it, and apologized when I returned home, until I realized that my reluctance to point and click was really a reluctance to line up and edit and frame whatever I was seeing or hearing or smelling.

The fall of the morning sunlight against the glittering sea. The crinkled face of an old woman selling spices in the market. It was, I believe, an instinctive reluctance to remove myself from my experience, an experience that could only occur far from home and habit, where the rules as much as the landscape were unfamiliar.

To photograph it was somehow to reduce and domesticate my experience and ultimately to kill it. I knew this, but still felt somehow apologetic for not having brought back a photographic record of the death of my experience.

Then, some time in the early 1980s, I was invited by a few magazines and journals to take a trip anywhere you like, the Seychelles in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Alaska, the Andes, and write about it and get paid for it, travel writing. The photography will be taken care of by a professional. I could leave my camera at home, and did.

Instead, I brought a notebook. And every night before sleeping, I spent a half-hour and sometimes more remembering and recapitulating my day, even when nothing happened, when I met no one of interest or went nowhere beyond the veranda outside my bedroom, and merely read the local newspaper and chatted briefly with the housekeeper, because there was always something happening in my head.

When we are dislocated, not relocated, we think new thoughts, deal with unbidden strange emotions, reflect on our past in a freshened way, from a new perspective.

We remember and are surprisingly saddened by a brief liaison or flirtation we have not thought about in decades. We decide to reread that 1,000-page novel our smartest friends insist is a work of genius, but somehow we didn’t get it the first time around and gave up 50 pages in.

It’s now more than 30 years that I have traveled without a camera and snapped no pictures with my iPhone, and I never apologize for it. Instead, when I travel, every night in a hotel room or a cabin or a tent, I sit down and write, sometimes by candlelight, an account of my day, whether I’m writing for hire or just traveling on my own.

My notes have the effect of organizing my attention for the next day, making me a sharper observer, a more careful listener, a more thoughtful guest.

I don’t do it to show to anyone else or so I can reread my notes months or years later and remember the joys and pains of that particular journey. No need. The simple act of writing it down in the first place imprints the journey in my conscious memory, stores it there, like a buried treasure. It’s my private treasure, and only I possess the map.

[SET Man]

Hey!

  Well, good for him. That wouldn't work for me. I recently went to Iceland in April and I just can't imagine myself not taking picture while I was there. I love taking pictures and to show them to my family and friends of my experience and saw. I could describe to them but a picture worth a thousand worth.

   But in all seriousness, I take picture first and foremost for myself, to keep and treasure those moments.

Take care,
Buddy 

[RDavidson]

I can understand not taking pictures when traveling. When you're paying attention to your photographic gadget, you can miss out on letting your mind fully engage and record the memories of the moment. When I travel, I might take a few photos, but I typically do so after I feel I've let myself observe and explore. Once I'm satisfied, I might snap a photo or two. I don't typically take photos of objects. I try to capture moments or events, which often include family and loved ones ; Photos that are meaningful to me. Sometimes I watch people take photos of things and ask myself "Really? You're going to look at that photo of the monkey at the zoo, or fireworks display, or whatever later?"

[Odal3]

When we are dislocated, not relocated, we think new thoughts, deal with unbidden strange emotions, reflect on our past in a freshened way, from a new perspective.

So true. But have to admit, I still take pictures when travelling since it's part of the fun. I do, however, ask myself the same questions when watching my kids perform something on stage or during a game: Do I want to experience it to the fullest or do I want to capture pictures for future reference.

[bside123]

Taking photos could be considered as another method of journaling or writing. Photos are also a type of diary, archive. In any case, a writer, journalist and/or photographer should be sensitive and respectful
to time, place and person when "capturing" the event. Journaling and writing can be just as much as an escape and being lost behind a camera. Art, in any form, captures the past and imagines the future.
I use a camera more often then a pen... for that matter, I use a key board more often than writing on paper.

[Wind Chaser]

  Well, good for him. That wouldn't work for me. I recently went to Iceland in April and I just can't imagine myself not taking picture while I was there. I love taking pictures and to show them to my family and friends of my experience and saw. I could describe to them but a picture worth a thousand worth.

   But in all seriousness, I take picture first and foremost for myself, to keep and treasure those moments.

There have been too many times when I had lamented, if only I had brought a camera. Even a quick snap in Auto mode is better than nothing. That hardly requires any effort or diminishes the experience of being there.

[FullRangeMan]

I do not travel, dont like to travel, airplanes are extremely dangerous, so I see the pictures and the read text that people like the author write.
Thanks to all photographers.

[charmerci]

Sure - let's just label everyone the same way.

When I travel, I take a lot of photos. I go places where tourists go and don't go. I keep my eyes and ears open to look at the landscape and the details all around me. It allows me to concentrate what's in front of me to frame and select out what is necessary and superfluous.

I have a friend who likes to takes photos of the "ordinary" and often very close up who loves Italy. So when I went there, instead of taking only the usual landscape, wide-view photography that I normally do, I started looking closer at parts of buildings and shop windows. I learned that Venice is about details and intimacy.

Photography enriches my experience.

[Doublej]

What did you expect from a writer?

[charmerci]

What did you expect from a writer?

Well, I understand it's a reaction to all the people taking ridiculous selfies and sticking phones everywhere without thinking. However, as a writer who reflects every night, he should understand deeper and that one-size-doesn't-fit all like he accuses others of doing.

[Goosepond]

Some people just think too damn much! 

Gene

[Wind Chaser]

And some people just don't enjoy photography as they enjoy traveling.