{"id":29104,"date":"2025-01-03T03:00:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=29104"},"modified":"2025-01-02T03:36:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T11:36:22","slug":"journals-vs-photographs-by-catharine-bramkamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/03\/journals-vs-photographs-by-catharine-bramkamp\/","title":{"rendered":"Journals vs. Photographs by Catharine Bramkamp"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Journals<\/a>Let\u2019s welcome back monthly columnist Catharine Bramkamp<\/a> as she shares with us \u201cJournals vs. Photographs.\u201d Enjoy!<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

I have always kept a travel journal<\/strong>. I have spent hours first researching then just creating the perfect travel journal from notebooks to iPads. Travel journals and travel souvenirs are some of the very few things I save.<\/p>\n

The hard copy journals have stayed consistent: pen, pages.<\/p>\n

Over the years the electronic solutions were more challenging: dicey internet in Syria, outrageously expensive internet in Las Vegas, the hard copy was always there as a reasonable alternative.<\/p>\n

Only recently has electronic option become stable enough that I can travel with just an iPad.<\/p>\n

But why keep a travel journal?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why all that work writing down words when a photo will do the job?<\/p>\n

Good question.<\/p>\n

During a lunch sponsored by Overseas Adventure Travels. I asked around the table – how do you record your travel memories?<\/p>\n

To one, the ladies answered: photographs.<\/p>\n

I agree. Photographs are fabulous, easy and do the job.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Except when they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We spend time and money on our travels. Even though we could just scroll through photos of the same places on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t that do the job?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t do the job. We want to feel a place.<\/p>\n

Taste the food, drink the wine, soak in the atmosphere and feel the warmth of a foreign sun.<\/p>\n

None of which can be photographed. Maybe the food.<\/p>\n

During the annual August Fringe Festival, all of Edinburgh seems to be accompanied by a bagpipe sound track.<\/p>\n

Every street features a young musician<\/strong>, determinedly standing in the summer rain playing a selection of bagpipe greatest hits.<\/p>\n

Each time we exited our hotel to the streets – there was the music, as if created just to enhance our experience.<\/p>\n

We took a photo of a musician, but the photo couldn\u2019t capture the chill of the rain, nor the sheer delight of music floating over the traffic noise, a reminder we were in a completely different place.<\/p>\n

Writing can alleviate the inevitable stress that attends travel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was no possible way to photograph how cranky I was our first morning in Kyoto.<\/p>\n

Time in Kyoto<\/h2>\n

Our hotel was located in a busy part of town, tall buildings, crowded streets, nondescript hotel.<\/p>\n

I huddled in a neighboring cafe<\/strong> (no coffee in the room – very cranky) well away from my husband and mother, morosely drinking bad coffee and bitching into my handwritten journal.<\/p>\n

Feeling marginally better, mostly because of the coffee, I joined the rest of the tour group resigned to a crappy, ugly day.<\/p>\n

I was completely wrong. Kyoto has beautiful, stunning gardens and temples, you just have to drive from the inexpensive hotel to reach them.<\/p>\n

The photographs were lovely<\/strong>. Both my delight and relief were undetectable in the photos.\u00a0 But alive in the cranky journal entry.<\/p>\n

This is why I write.<\/p>\n

And you can too.<\/p>\n

The Magic of Journaling<\/h2>\n

You can express the magic of encountering street musicians in a Seville courtyard.<\/p>\n

The nonsense of a hundred tourists<\/strong> in jeeps photographing a patient tiger.<\/p>\n

Zooming in to create the illusion that they just \u201cdiscovered\u201d this Indian tiger while strolling in the wild.<\/p>\n

Writing will fix an event<\/strong> and a memory more firmly than a photo can. I use my photos for triggers.<\/p>\n