[jakevoytko]

Up to a few years ago, I would take vacations where I would travel for weeks without a phone. In my day-to-day, I interacted with technology for 10-16 hours a day, and that bothered me. So I would completely unplug. I would just bring a notebook, a pen, and a DSLR camera.

People were always shocked when they'd hear this. "How could you possibly travel without any electronics?" They were unfazed by my response, "This is how people took vacations up until 5 years ago."

My experience was positive. When I returned to work, I'd be full of ideas and energy. But it's less convenient. To travel safely, I had to research everything I might need: directions, alternative routes, phone numbers, restaurants, sites to visit. When I landed, I needed to find an international calling card and public phones to call my loved ones. These were difficult to find 5 years ago, and I'm sure it's close to impossible now. But everything always managed to work out. In a lot of ways, it created so much more of an adventure. It put me in a lot of unfamiliar situations that I needed to reason through.

There's no way I could do this anymore. I've started to prefer unstructured vacations where I travel to cheap places on a whim. Buying last-minute tickets is so much easier with an internet connection. Also, my girlfriend would never put up with it. She'd rather just have a phone with a map. And in some ways, that's so much more sensible.

[m463]

You can still hide behind the camera instead of entering the scenery.

[Kye]

You don't invest in a good camera to leave it dangling from your neck. Finding ways to capture the experience is part of the experience for a lot of people. I don't know about jakevoytko, but photography is how I enter the scenery.