Continuing the countdown of things I’m going to miss about my study abroad, the number six thing I’m going to miss about my trip is the high volume and quality of my photography and blog posts. I’ve gotten a lot of support about the quality of my photos, but I have to admit, I feel like I’m cheating a bit. I’ve been surrounded by hundreds of new places and experiences, it would be difficult not to get good photos of it.
I’m a little worried what that means when I get home to my safe and familiar. At best I hope this experience has taught me to look at things with the lens in mind. I’m hoping that while my life back in Cleveland hasn’t changed very much that I’ve changed enough to make in new and interesting.
I’m also worried that I simply won’t have the time I did here to go out and explore with my camera. That’s not to say that my life back in the U.S. is going to be off the charts hectic again, but I was lucky to have a light course load and a lot of free time here, so I had a lot of opportunity to just walk around with my camera and snap photos of things that intrigued me.
To make the point, I’ve taken over 7,350 digital photos and 360 film shots since I arrived in Paris. That’s more than my totals for 2011 and 2010 - combined. There’s no way I’m going to keep those numbers up when I get home, and that scares me.
In the same vein, I’m really going to miss my blog. I know I wasn’t the best with regular posts, but the posting I did was really fun for me, and I’m worried about having the same time crunch that I’m going to have with my photography, and the same content crunch. I’ve really had to think hard about what my blog is going to become after I get home. Of course I’m going to keep posting about my reclamation and getting some the adventures I’ve had that I just didn’t get a chance to post while I was here (out of 7,350 photos, only about 350 have been posted…), but I can’t ride that wave forever. Right now I’m debating between keeping the blog running to document the other trips I want to take, padding the lulls in between trips with travel and photo tips, and sharing the photos I do take, or just letting it fade off into the annals of the internet, an archive of this fantastic time in my life.
On one hand, I intend to continue traveling, and I want to document and share those trips much in the same way as this one. It would be difficult to justify starting a new blog every time I want to hop on a plane, so it would make sense to keep this one running. On the other hand, I don’t want the gaps between trips to get so long that this lulls into a “daily life blog.” I don’t have the time to blog my daily life, and it really isn’t interesting enough to share with all of you. For now, though, I plan to run the blog and share whatever trips or adventures I can muster, until it feels right to close up shop and move on.
As for my photography, I’m hoping that taking Digital Photography will help force me to go out and take new, interesting, and high quality photos, as well as teach me more digital editing techniques and give me some practice on them. As long as I’m looking to improve, I’m hoping my will power will keep my blog and my photography going.
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