The biggest mistake travelers make and don’t realize

If you love to travel, then you also love to take pictures. I’m a self-proclaimed amateur photographer, and I have to say, I have some great pictures that I love to show off to anyone who will look at them.

When I travel, I make sure my camera bag is full of digital disks. I can’t imagine taking pictures using film anymore, and yes, I used to go through rolls of film too.

I have scaled back my obsession with taking a picture of everything at Disney World, and there are only so many pictures of an Orca breaching the pool at SeaWorld. I do have to admit, I’m not much of a people photographer, and that sadly includes my kids. Don’t worry I still have overlowing disks with pictures of them.

On my trip to Japan, I was prepared. Or so I thought, and now, long after the plane landed back safely in the good ole U.S.A. I realized that the only thing I regretted about that trip was me.

I filled three or four disks with pictures, but now I realize my mistakes. I tried to get cute. I tried to capture the essence of every waterfall, every temple covered in neatly trimmed and maintained moss. Every temple statue got my attention and my camera.

I have pictures of the Nara deer, the temple of a thousand smiling Buddhas, pictures of every rock carving at Disney Sea in Tokyo, and even every Tori Gate I bowed at. I even have some amazing shots of popular tourist temples that I managed to get without having a single person in them.

But I still managed to mess it all up. My focus was on all of those things I just mentioned, and this is where I realized the mistakes I made. I didn’t take pictures of the other stuff.

I was so focused on capturing the culture and history that I forgot about turning some of that toward the architecture, the cities, and yes, the people. As I scrolled through my some 2,000 pictures, I only found what amounted to a handful of images that I wished I had spent more time on.

This is a mistake many of us make. My father traveled to Europe for a month, took more pictures than I can imagine (he is worse than I am), and he too said he was so focused on the architecture and landscapes that he forgot to take the simpler pictures. The ones that tend to capture the daily lives of those who live there.

Amateur photographers tend to focus more on what they are there for. Could be temples, churches, or ruins. It could be food, culture, or the right angle to capture the side and size of a building. And in doing so, we tend to look for the next image in the same vein, and we forget to look at everything else.

Some of my favorite things from Japan are the vending machines that are everywhere. I wish I had taken even one picture of them. I loved the small streets and markets, yet I didn’t bother to stop long enough to capture them in a way that actually told their story. My images are flippant cast-offs, pictures I thought I needed, but didn’t really care to put the effort in. And I regret it.

Even a simple 7-11 market, or a cafe sign on a deserted alley, or a rice paddy worker standing in shallow water, casting a shadow as they threw a net. It’s those images I missed.

If I’m ever fortunate enough to travel somewhere new again, I need to think about what makes the country beautiful, and what stands out that I am taking for granted. We all need to take a step back long enough to see the bigger picture, because if we don’t, we won’t take it, and we will regret it.