15. FIT video/photos & memories: (full)

   Anecdote:  My Dad's photo memories: Months before my father died he told me that he wished he had more slides of his yearly travels out West. Yet 2 years later as I rummaged through his effects, there were hundreds, if not thousands of 'disorganized' slides.                  

So what did Dad mean?
    Perhaps at life's final twilight you can't relive your life enough.

    Did Dad also mean you had to have something to relive? Perhaps at life's end our review of our life is somewhat analogous to the instantaneous life flashbacks of near-death experiences. In the final years we may hold ourselves sorely accountable for the valuable time we had …. and wasted.

    By analogy, my greatest adventure today is walking from my recliner to my bathroom to the kitchen for a soda water, & back to my recliner.   I have 100s of hours & gigabytes of video footage of all my travel trips: US & foreign .... which I  ‘re-live’ from my recliner (it actually rocks 😀)  as I edit them to share with others in my Youtube Channel: : https://www.youtube.com/@scottsolotravels

Why video vs. photos?

More than 30 years ago, I began videoing all my (FIT) free independent solo travel, including hikes in US & Canada's National Parks & roadtrips trips.  When I visit a site, I consciously. search out its nuances & details. I video-record my ad-lib narrated reflections, and emotional reactions, if any. AND  the myriad of questions constantly popping into my brain.

I was never content with sterile snapshots revealing little description, context or detail unless it was the obvious: e.g. Eiffel Tower. While I DO love a truly creative photo, travel photos are NOT usually that of that quality; merely indecipherable travel bookmarks.

Without my videocamera's running-narrative memorializing my reflections & questions, such nuances would be lost to me forever; like fine sand slipping quickly thru my mind.

Their sole original purpose then & now was to let me relive my solo independent domestic travels and my authentic ‘in-the-dirt’ mode of foreign travels in my old age rocking chair when I could no longer hike or travel. i.e. “now” (cancer.) 

ARS Currendi: 6 Reasons Why Travel Videos Are Better Than Pictures. 
https://www.arscurrendi.com/6-reasons-travel-videos/

Ironically, during much of my foreign travel years, I could seldom immediately review & edit my videos when I returned home because I was too busy researching & planning my next trip. So now, in my 80s (86), I tirelessly edit videos for my YouTube Channel <: https://www.youtube.com/@scottsolotravels AND write for this website. https://scottsolotravels.com/

Even now when editing, what is amazing & validating of my editing process is the intense immediate memories those videos recall in my brain ....  and sometimes it really just seems like yesterday. Equally important, I remember individual sites & experiences in detail that I had completely forgotten, and .... would never have remembered without the video. 

Now, at 85, I have the luxury and obsession to learn more about a site, statue etc. & their importance to their culture. Even as I edit, I stop & Google/Grok search the questions I pondered years ago and then  slip a short note into my video.

I never planned to make my videos public, until todays technology allowed it. 

1. Why Video (rather than photos)?: 

  a. video mimics the natural panoramic sweeping view of my own eyes across the landscape ... enhanced by my telephoto len's flight to the top of distant mountains otherwise inaccessible.

        Anecdote: Cathedrals & Canyon de Chelly: The full view of down a cathedral's main aisle smoothly focusing closer and closer on the altar, and then, soaring high above to normally unseen detail. 

                Leon Cathedral on Camino de Santiago, Spain

 Long view down into Canyon de Chelly’s deep canyon pulling back to pause directly across the canyon, and slowly focusing closer and closer on the far wall until a small square grows into an ancient small rock wall building nestled in a crevice 400’ above the canyon floor.  [ytlk: Canyon de Chelly]

        Anecdote:  Machu PIcchu:  EX: soon as you walk up trail from the ticket office to the large Shepard’s hut
plateau, UR struck by size & grandeur, &  uniqueness, (Of course, my reaction also reflects VIDs /PIKs I have seen in my lifetime) 

                       Parque Pisac ruins' self-guide walking tour

          Anecdote: Varanassi’s Manakarnika Ghat cremations
                            at the Ganges River on a festival day.

    b. video captures & discovers small artistic details in museums & churches too high to be easily seen or that guides don’t have time to point out. I also search out the intimate cultural things that help define that culture adding my observations as I film.

       Anecdote: Bayeaux, Normandy's "shutter dogs": For example, in Normandy’s Bayeaux I videoed many little sculptured brass figurines (1 ½” – 2” tall) that hold the home’s exterior shutters open during the day.

    c. Discover details and perspectives, not easily seen from a great distance in churches or high mountaintop glaciers.

         Anecdote: Man statue high on a church wall that I discovered with video's telephoto lens for future investigation.

         Anecdote: Argentina's  Mount Fitz Roy,aka Cerro Chaltén

    d. recall/record in-the-moment reflections & questions that I can research in the future. recapture some of the thrill of discovery and exploration.

        Anecdote: Western Australia between Perth and Broome: I let my video camera run for 5-10 minutes so I could remember &  ‘feel’ that desolation of time and landscape;  interminable hours of nothingness.

    e. record minute nuanced detail verbally in context so each detail is understood in the total context. & so you don't forget.

         Anecdote: Sacsayhuaman Inca ruins (above Cusco) random
                  6” square indentations on huge Saxywoman Inca stones.

    f. record the unusual most never see:

        Anecdote: the walk between the two dome layers
                         of Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral in Florence.

OTOH: ----

    1. Few travel facts or site facts: that's what guidebooks & google are for.     

    2. My narration is spontaneous, unrehearsed, diary-like & in-the-moment speaking to MYSELF ....years into my future in my recliner remembering.    RATHER THAN: well-rehearsed,  pumped-up enthusiasm for short, cherry-picked video clips pushing you to “Subscribe“. 

    3. NO music background added to 'punch up' the excitement. They stand or fall on their own. ng at-the-moment descriptions, reflection & questions.

Music background: very little while I hiked/walked; so, if you want, play your own choice of appropriate music. Best of all worlds. 😀