Month: November 2018

El Salvador collage
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Traveling at the speed of Light

A friend from high school and I decided that when we graduated we would go on a 3+ month backpacking trip to Central America, Florida, Puerto Rico and end in California.  Nobody believed our outlandish dream since this was long before the days of never ending travel blogs, HD cameras, drones, and Instagram.  But we were set on it and once we bought our tickets a few months later, we were airborne. The multi-destination ticket was the first time I realized 1 of many possible ways to travel surprisingly cheap if you spend a little time researching first.  We took a flight from Washington D.C. to El Salvador, El Salvador to Costa Rica, Costa Rica to Florida, Florida to Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico to California, all for $1200.  And to our young frugal traveller amazement for some unknown reason, which I doubt still works this way today, we were graced with an upgrade to 1st class for every single flight.

Lucky for me I celebrated my 18th birthday in El Salvador so every flight following included as many alcoholic beverages I could consume in the given time frame before landing. Also, luckily for me my friend was willing and eager to tape a large ball of hash, I may or may not have supplied, to his upper thigh in a glass jar, which lasted until the end of our time in El Salvador.

Foreign Party Times
“The good times are killing me.” – Modest Mouse
(It’s hash, not crack)

I arrived to El Salvador with a jam packed hiking backpack that clocked in at literally 80 pounds, possibly heavier.  Quite a comical site to watch me try to put on after pulling off the conveyor belt based on random bystanders reactions.  By the end of the trip mostly everything I had initially thought important was long gone, never to be seen again or missed and I was happily down to a 15-20 pound bag for the rest of my travels.  Little did I know that willingly (as well as sometimes unwillingly) shedding personal belongings would become a constant theme of my life in the following years.  So my main travel tip, which took me many more than a few tries to finally get right, is travel light.  Extremely light. So light it makes you uncomfortable at first.  It makes life on the road way less stressful and much more pleasant.

Fujifilm Finepix A210
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The Beginning

My passion for photography sparked during a post high school trip to Central America.  Equipped with a FUJIFILM FinePix A210 (pictured above in its current condition) that has a stunning 3.2 megapixel capability, which maybe was considered respectable for a digital camera in those days? (along with a couple 128MB memory cards) and I was ready to go.  Took me a little bit of minimal use to find out I could actually change the image quality to improve the picture, but luckily I figured that out a few weeks in, not that it made much difference since 99% of the photos I took had no skill or thought put into them.  Until 1 night, there was a really great post apocalyptic looking sun setting over an abandoned beach in El Salvador, where I finally put in the effort in hopes I could slightly capture the moment.  That set of pictures are some of the only few from the trip I would consider slightly noteworthy.

El Salvador sunset

Since then I’ve upgraded, downgraded, re-upgraded many times over and still don’t have my ideal camera equipment, but at the rate technology moves and the top of the line price points… What’s a poor artist to do.   I currently shoot on a Canon D70, an old but respectable struggling G12 Powershot, my LG G6, which takes surprisingly impressive photos, a GoPro Hero4 Silver, and a DJI Mavic mini since my Mavic Air recently committed suicide on a barn in New Hampshire.

It took a while of hobby photography/casual videography to finally hit me that I actually enjoyed it. I was decent at art (mainly basic drawing), but never had natural talent for painting or anything like that. More than likely probably due to lack of effective training by a skilled teacher, which I’d always wished for because I feel like painting really captures the moment better than other aspects of art, so instead photography became my painting. I prefer to keep my photos free of too much editing so they can still be fairly compared to the actual real life experience as opposed to some HD over saturated masterpiece brought to you by Adobe Photoshop.

There isn’t really a goal behind this “blog” (which will soon likely change to primarily video) other than to portray an accurate photographic timeline of my life, possibly accompanied with brief summaries now and then of key highlights which got me to where I am and formed me into the person I am today. And hopefully in turn that will inspire you to follow your dreams, whatever they may be. I will try to recall worthy stories around certain pictures and provide the many frugal travel methods (some may or may not still be relevant at this point since a lot has changed over the years) and tips I used along the way, as well as point out the mistakes I made when they pop into my head so you can avoid them. And anything else I can think of that could potentially be helpful if you have a yearning for a journey. If I don’t cover it or if you have a question about something specific leave a comment and I’ll respond when I see it!