I am
usually a person of considerable planning. To guarantee a positive
user experience, if you will. In a new city I will study a
restaurant guide each time I plan to go to dinner. My apartment is
half-furnished after 10 months as I continue the search for the
right set of mahogany stained solid wood shelves.
You'd think recording the experiences of travel would go this
route.
Unfortunately, the purchase of a good camera is still on my
medium-term (6-9 months) shopping list. Fortunately, Kodak makes a
series of 24+3-exposure waterproof, disposable cameras with flash
and battery, and stocks every drugstore and souvenir shop in the
world with it.
And so these trusty gadgets note much of my leisure travel:
following the black-and-white wavy tiles of Macau's Lisboa square,
people-watching in Bintan, the Bay Area's diverse landscapes. (Note
that these are all outdoors.)
With a disposable camera I can point and shoot without
worrying about shutter speed and lighting and (god forbid) focus.
(Just remember that objects in the viewfinder are farther than they
seem. Much farther. In fact, if you think you're close enough to
your subject, step a foot closer.)
It is also
the size of a mobile phone and better built to survive -- no, thrive
-- in many of nature's elements. All my
just-ascended-from-a-drift-dive shots are taken with a waterproof
model. (When was the last time someone brought a real camera, or a
mobile phone, on a dive boat with barely room enough for your fins
and keeps you a mere 2 feet above the water?)
And then there's the post-travel heart-stopping suspense of
waiting for prints, and the disappointment of having photographs
that don't quite measure up to the real thing. With a disposable
camera, none of that health risk! You get what you pay for, and you
know it. (Actually, with one-hour photo service you only pay for the
shots the machine thinks is worthy of a print.) You have complete
emotional detachment from prints that purport to encapsulate
religion-inspiring vistas in a miniscule 4x6-inch area.
With a
disposable camera in my backpack, I am assured of a planning-free,
thinking-free, stress-free travel experience. I will have very few
photographs worthy of hanging on a wall. But I need only to look at
my all-blue snapshots of fan coral to remember the peacefulness of
being surrounded on all sides by water.
Unless, of course, I decide to take the emotional plunge and
invest in an underwater
camera...
