The Journey Is Half The Fun

Everyone has heard the words ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and I totally believe it too.  Images evoke reactions, some can be described with words, some just leave you speechless.  But for the image makers, I would go so far as to say a picture is worth a million words.  To me a photograph summarizes an entire adventure, not just the moment it clicks.  A single image is like a 2 month journal entry.

I was at Abu Dhabi International Airport the other day, flipping through the magazines while killing time before my flight to Paris and I came across the July issue of Men’s Journal that featured one of my cliff jumping images taken in Sri Lanka.  I had a hunch it was going to run this month but ya never know with print deadlines so I was still surprised when I saw it.

Instantly, the image conjured up thoughts of how the shoot came together, the difficulties and challenges in getting the model in the right position…even holding expensive camera gear while up to my waist in some of the most corrosive and camera destroying liquid known to man…saltwater.  Yup, flashbulb memory is a great thing.  I think the 1999 Levi’s Elevator Fantasy ad that Michael Bay directed comes pretty close to describing how quick the thoughts can come to mind.

So after settling into my nice window seat on the Air France flight I started thinking about the image and 5 things came to mind about the trip and not necessarily the frame itself: 1) the weather: tropical, humid and sometimes a downpour, 2) the locals: outgoing and genuine, 3) the food: hot n’ spicy and always a surprise, 4) the dangerous: random people holding AK-47′s on the street corners (the civil war was still alive and well at this time), and 5) the tuk tuk’s: a local taxi run off of a two cycle engine.  Don’t get me wrong, the minutes leading up to the image were a ton of fun, it was the journey that made the trip memorable.