Slides, books and videos
Travel stories have taken many forms…
Moving some stuff out of my Mum’s flat a few weeks ago we came across boxes of photos and slides. While photos require no special equipment to view them, slides require a projector, light and a screen of some sort. Sadly this technology morphed from the reserve of the half-decent amateur photographer to the holiday snapper and a staple of 70s culture was born.
“Why don’t you pop round and I’ll show you my holiday slides?” Originally this was not a cheesy chat-up line, but a genuine invitation to glasses of sangria, Ritz biscuits with fish paste, cheese and tinned pineapple chunks on sticks, and three excruciating hours of snaps of George in his budgie smugglers by the pool in Torremolinos projected in biological detail 8-foot high on the lounge wall. Fortunately, technology and swimwear have moved on and nowadays you can skim your friend’s holiday snaps on Instagram and click the little heart without even pausing. They get that warm feeling of being appreciated and sharing and you are saved the lost evening and the lingering aftertaste of home-made Sangria.
It seems the natural successor to the interminable slide show, in motorcycling at least, became the travel book. The pattern followed slide shows. It started with the professional well-written travel autobiographies... think Ted Simon or Sam Manicom. They are inspirational, engaging and entertaining. Thousands were inspired to swing their leg over and get riding, touring and have adventures. It also seemed to inspire a whole generation of wannabe authors. Sharing slides morphed into sharing words. There are some engaging and fascinating books out there and then there are the rest. The ability to self-publish is both a blessing and a curse. Small runs of books with limited commercial aspirations have given us access to some fantastic stories. Journeys through foreign lands telling of personal and emotional development. Some have become love stories, a few have become nail-biting adventures and some have come to a premature end in far-off countries as the writer finds their nirvana and drops the stand one last time to start a new life they had never imagined. Unfortunately it has also allowed the terminally dull an outlet now their three-hour slide show is off the menu. Now, I am not advocating publishing censorship but the benefit of the old system of printed books is that editors and publishers had to read it, enjoy it and commit some money to it before it made it to your local bookshop. Yes this meant less commercial things got culled, but the upside was that the dreary travel blog never made it into the public domain to be bought by a loving Aunty and gifted at Christmas or birthday time because she ‘knows you like motorbikes’. Now any book-shaped pressie is unwrapped with as much dread as excitement.
However, there seems to be some light on the horizon as the self-published travelogue may have seen its day. Images became words and now they are going back to images, moving ones. Video is the new slide show and this really perplexes me? Like the travel autobiography, there are some good ones in amongst lots of regurgitated versions of the 70s slide show slogs. What perplexes me is the effort involved. Writing a book requires you to make some notes each day on the road and then sit down and spend time crafting this into a story when you get back. The impact on your travels is minimal. Hopefully you were already planning to visit all those exciting destinations before you decided the world would be worse off without your thousand page doorstop masterpiece. My point is, the majority of the work is done after the event.
Making a video, a good one at least, is a full-time job. I am disregarding the two-hour runs of vibrating footage where the rider presses record on the crash bar mounted Go Pro as they leave in the morning, lets the camera run until it goes flat and then posts the whole thing with a backing track of wind noise and their son’s garage band’s latest ‘recording’. Getting good clips, drive-by shots, reveals, it all requires preparation. Riding by seeing the potential shot, going back and setting it up trying it a few times. Doing it alone is challenging and it is a lot easier with a friend, or two. It is a big commitment and will quickly become the priority of the journey. Are you approaching the corner looking for the apex, appreciating the view or looking for a good camera angle? Is the video about the journey or is the journey about the video? Certainly, clever smartphones and cheap HD video cameras mean we can all look forward to more and more travel videos.
The sad thing is I really quite miss a bit of cheddar and pineapple on a stick. Maybe there is a business opportunity for Amazon to despatch some as soon as you click play on YouTube, to complete the experience?