Currently as a documentarian, my phone is loaded with pictures of my cats. They are quirky animals that have tremendous personalities and I want to remember them (they are my children, after all). I take pictures of friends, family, events, and most generally, things I find beauty in. As for why I take these photos or videos, aside from the simple sentiment of wanting to remember them, I am forced to think of why I want to remember them. I can’t go back and have that exact same experience, however I absolutely get a sense of nostalgia, which is something I value.
I keep them for my own sake, but I share some on social media such as Instagram, which is a fairly new social media outlet for me so I am still learning how to operate all of its functions. My travels are also well-documented. My intentions are to capture the personality of the backdrop, unique individuals (sometimes strangers), as well as the unforgettable experiences as much as the forgettable. Sometimes I won’t remember some moment of a trip until I reminisce upon watching the clips from that time. Additionally, I have been traveling the past few summers abroad, recording video of my experiences with the intention of editing them into one video for website advertising purposes for a college. Hopefully in a couple of months I will have the knowledge to do so. So here I am, open to anything that this class has to offer. I am here to absorb everything I can.
Documentaries leave a lasting impact on me because of their non-fiction nature, and so the documentarian I hope to become is one who tells a story other people will remember. Reality has always been more intriguing to me than fantasy. I find that humans are far more fascinating precisely because the conflict they endure is real, and so the solutions to those problems, thus, are real. Resolution can be such a creative process. Finding the best answer, and to see how it unfolds will forever attract me. I hope to encourage people that amongst the mundane drills of the societies we live in, are seemingly fantastic individuals leading extraordinary lives and for that reason, their stories are important. Even the mundane can be re-conceptualized as extraordinary when actively and deeply thought about.