The appeal didn’t hit me until perhaps our last evening.
London as a class college trip….. no thank you… but in the end it was an adventure.
After swallowing the fact that these UK dwellers don’t bat an eye lid at taking an 8 hour train journey (but freak out about driving more than an hour to see the natural beauty of Scotland!!!) I made myself commit to going on this adventure to seal memories with classmates, explore a city I’d seen only as a child, and to snap a few photos.
The main goal of the adventure was to see photography exhibitions and learn what is out there among the greats of past and present time. To me, this is not my choice of entertainment, which was also a hesitation in embarking on this journey, yet I suppose it’s something one must do while studying photography.
The exhibits themselves were mostly not my taste. I must admit, I had never heard of many of the photographers, nor will I choose to follow them as inspiration, but I did learn from the trip and can now say that yes it’s important to think of how one would put together an exhibit from coming up with an idea, attempting to create it, nailing your own take on your self-given brief to letting it be shown to the world.
Generally, things I learn on adventures are not what I usually set out to accomplish, one could say that I was meant to take away new photographic allure but it was the journey as a whole where I learned that yes, I can hobble around London with two blistered and bloody feet as well as stay in a room with 7 classmates - how can you have seen each other each week for one or two years but only properly bond moments before it’s all over??!
Despite my hobbling, the heat, my fear of the underground and the MANY nude photographs we encountered, London with all its hustle and iconic areas is somewhere I would nonetheless enjoy exploring on my own timeline at some point. There was a lot jam packed into each day and too much to explore in our wee time-frame.
As we rode a ferry on the Thames I thought to myself, “people save their whole lives to come here and do this, and I just happened upon this opportunity because of the program I chose…”. Since life is a journey and the journey is the adventure I am thankful that I can now say I have seen the Tate Modern and the Barbican, but I fear some would be disappointed that I was more taken by the architecture outside the Barbican itself than the content within, and that having to be evacuated from the Tate the moment we entered because of a fire in one of the rooms was more entertaining to me than the efforts of the artists.
This makes me wonder, how will all my photographic endeavors hold to other people’s value? What will they take from my work? What can I do to impact the photographic realm yet remain true to my taste of adventure?
We sat and laughed with our lecturers over disgusting coffee at the hostel we stayed at and saw them wearing hoodies and trainers enjoying the sun on their skin the same as us and realized how thankful we were to have had these souls speak into our lives over the last two years. Two short years that flew as though held by a kite string; always held at arms length but the wind could take our efforts wherever we let them fly.
One of my favorite moments, as I stumbled up and down the streets that so many have walked over before, was walking through the St. James park at dusk and seeing the sunset with Buckingham Palace in the not so distant pathway. But I sure was thankful we took the underground back to the hostel….
These photos are some that I took on our short stint to London I hope you enjoy them!!
