There's this idea that when travelling, you're either the Type A person who is the one planning everything, or the Type B person who's okay with anything and just exists. And that both have to exist for a trip to go well. For most of my life I've been Type B because I've gone on trips with family, or friends who had the strong urge to go somewhere and I just wanted to tag along. I didn't care much where we went or what we did, I was there for the people and food.
It's fair to say it might also be because I was more of an "in the moment" kind of person. I always thought it was odd to take pictures of super famous paintings. Everyone crowds around the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, but their pictures have a bunch of heads in them. Plus, you catch your own reflection in the glass trying to take the photo and that's just embarrassing. You can find a better picture online, so what's the point of taking the picture? To prove that you were there? I thought the whole thing was kind of silly. Being on vacation should be relaxing. Taking pictures "ruins the point".
My plan was mostly to not take any pictures and just hope other people would send them in a shared album after the trip. But now that I think about it, that unreliability is a big part of why I decided to start capturing on my own. Memories of trips became more valuable to me as I got older, but it's hard to coordinate shared albums with people. Maybe not everyone has the same phone and we have to look for a third-party option. Maybe the person who has some photos didn't like how they looked in them, so they weren't sent. It took one of my friends a full year to even open his footage from our group trip in December 2024, and he still hasn't shared it with us to this day.
So although I'm having a great time in the moment, I've learned that the memories fade when I don't have the original sources. My brain generalizes emotions I experienced during the trip, but not the specific points in time. With a good b-roll video, you're basically getting transported back into those moments. You'll recognize the sound of a conversation happening behind you that you didn't even register at the time, or how you spilled your drink right after taking a picture of it and your friend's weird high-pitched laugh at you. And from an effort perspective, it's genuinely the easiest thing. You stop walking, hit the record button, wait like 10 seconds. So when you look back on the trip, it really feels like you're still there. My stories from trips have been so much more vivid since I started doing this, because I'm able to connect the conversations and even my own thoughts back to the actual moment.
Naturally, once you start caring about capturing the environment, you start caring about what the environment actually is. Like, if I have a camera and I know I'm going to be collecting these snapshots, I want them to be interesting. I want to look back and see the differences of that place vs. what I could see at home. So if I'm given the role of the Type A planner, I want variety. Places that feel different from each other so the footage isn't all blending together when I look back.
This also means capturing way more of the journey rather than only the destination. The train rides, the walks between places, etc. Before, it was all dead time, just getting from point A to point B. Now those are some of the clips I look back to most, because the in-between is where most of the trip actually happens.
And I think that's what surprised me the most about having a camera. It didn't pull me out of being "in the moment". It might if that's the only thing you're doing (like if you only take pictures of yourself so that other people know you went there). But in my experience, I'm noticing and learning much more about the places I visit. I notice a strange plant, so I film it, look it up later, and find out that it's a native plant in that region that's poisonous. Glass columns in a building that I thought just looked cool, but were actually functionally designed to survive earthquakes. I wouldn't have known any of that if I wasn't looking for something to film.
Having the camera pushes you to have a more intentional travel experience without taking all your energy. I focus on capturing the raw moment instead of getting the perfect shot. It makes the trip better on both ends: You're having a richer experience while actually there, and you have it all saved for later.