Call Me Old-Fashioned | Travel Diaries From Vancouver, British Columbia

I stand at the edge of a quiet overlook in Vancouver with my film camera in hand.  Before me, a panorama of snow-capped peaks stretches across the horizon.  Their grandeur is impossible to hold in a single frame, but I try anyway.

I planned this trip to the mountains months ago.  Just me, my film camera, a well-loved journal, and the quiet I’ve been craving.  With no agenda, but to wander, to notice, and to press the shutter when something moves me.  I do this not for likes or proof, but because it’s simply beautiful.  There are people everywhere I go.  Not too many, but enough.  They arrive, almost always armed with phones.  I watch from a distance as they angle themselves toward the view, not looking at it but around it, framing their smiles with the mountains like props.  Rehearsing poses, constant clicking, and then moving on.

I think back to my younger self.  The girl who fell in love with photography in the darkroom and who believed in the magic of waiting.  The ritual of film slowed me down, and it still does.  Choosing what to capture, framing it with intention, trusting my instincts, and being present for it.

I rarely take selfies because it pulls me out of the moment I came to experience.  I want to be here.  It makes me wonder.  Why the obsession with documenting ourselves in a place?  Isn’t the place enough?

Sitting cross-legged on a rock, I raise my camera and click the shutter just once.  That was all it needed.  I don’t need the world to know I stood here.  I don’t need my face in front of the glacier to feel its majesty.  I just need to remember the way I feel in this very moment.  Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in wonder for wonder’s sake.  I believe in leaving space in the composition for the landscape to speak for itself.