travel life | magazine columnist | Rome | Italy
Shooting The Mona Lisa
by
Jim Shahin
That's only one of the bad things that can happen when someone does
something with a camera. Another is that all photos have me in
them. I think I am probably in more family photos than anyone in
the world. I don't mean my family photos. I mean other people's
families.
I'm in them on purpose.
You see, while visiting the world's great treasures, I've gotten
kind of surly about having to dodge between the cameras or abruptly
come to a halt every three steps, as if I've walked into an
invisible clothesline, to keep from being in the frame of
somebody's picture. Nor do I like the whole ducking thing. So now I
just keep walking.
I apologize in advance to you and your family photo album for my
behavior. But let me just say that there are people who calculate
how much of our time is spent waiting at red lights. I think it is
something like 43 years of the average life span. Someone should do
the same calculation regarding how much time we spend while on
vacation waiting for people to take pictures. Assume, for the heck
of it and because I like to use the word "assume" in math-oriented
sentences, that the typical person takes roughly two weeks of
vacation each year.
Divide the waiting-for-picture-taking time into two weeks and I
think you'd find a high waiting-to-sightseeing ratio. Either that,
or you'd find you have so little to do with your time that you
might as well become a magazine columnist.
In the interest of full disclosure and making my word count, I must
confess that there was a time in my travel life when I took
pictures every chance I could. I enjoyed trying to capture the
essence of a place on film and having it as a keepsake for the rest
of my life. By "essence of a place," I mean exactly what you think
I mean: The Colosseum in
Rome with the sun slanting down just right
and my 3-year-old son's face bigger than all
Italy in the
foreground. Or the majestic ruins of Tikal in Guate- mala, its
timeless mystery evoked in a blur behind the smiling visage of my
wife. You know. Art.
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