Before the Phones Told Us Where to Go

“Before the phones told us where to go” - a line from John K. Samson’s “Oldest Oak at Brookside” (Winter Wheat, 2016) is a line I often ponder while roaming countless city blocks attempting to stop time in rectangular fashion. As the line repeats in my head while I snap the shutter release, I also ponder the following questions: Is life better now that we are constantly connected and no longer have to Magellan our way around the world? What role, if any, does photography play in navigation? I attempt to answer these questions and more in this short-ish essay.

So what exactly was life like before following the blue dot on Google Maps? Well, maybe it was not that much different. Perhaps the better question is what was navigation like before the internet? Or before maps even? Just how did the Polynesians discover the Hawaiian islands anyway? Luck? The stars? A bit of both? I do not have the resources to answer those questions at the moment, so will stick to a brief story of the Hostel Treasure Map, a term coined in the Fall of 2009 while backpacking around Japan and Korea.

I was in Kyoto in the autumn of 2009, solo traveling with a North Face slingshot backpack that fit everything including a mini-laptop (barely; bursting at the seams, but it worked).  I had a hostel booked, was wide-eyed, and thrilled to be back in Japan after a five day mini-adventure in Korea. On the bullet train from Hiroshima, I glanced at my printed out directions and they read something along the lines of: 

“Take the north exit from JR Kyoto Station and hop on the No. 12 bus. Ride that bus for roughly 20 minutes in a counter-clockwise direction. After about 20 minutes, get off the bus and walk north for 10 minutes. The hostel will be on your left.” 

Huh!? All the best finding that hostel. I ended up not following those directions as I arrived at Kyoto station later than expected. The hostel’s website stated that you could not check in past 8pm, which at the time made absolutely no sense. I did not have access to the internet on the fly to confirm such potential rumours. Thus, I hopped in a taxi and with my completely elementary Japanese somehow communicated to the driver to take me to said hostel. Point being: somehow I  survived and relied on other navigation/survival skills to traverse around the globe before the phones told us where to go. And perhaps it was all a little more adventurous. 

In pre-smartphone era Japan, I would take photographs of key intersections on my deck-of-card-sized point-and-shoot so I could retrace my steps back to the hostel. This often worked quite well and also gave me some decent photographs to sift through at the end of the travels. But,  not now! What are we doing now to navigate unchartered territory? Of course, you know the answer. Our phones are telling us where to go, which is all well and fine, incredibly convenient, and comforting, especially in places where we may not speak the language. Additionally,  I have been able to get to many places with minimal effort because of this 5g-connected rectangle in my pocket. So much now that I rarely think twice before leaving the house of how to get to where I am going. A safety blanket for the ages. 

So is life better now that we are constantly connected? A brief saunter around Shinsaibashi and Amemura in Osaka recently had me thinking perhaps not always. I could not help but notice many tourists with a phone in hand, likely following the blue dot from destination to destination. And this is nothing new, but it got me thinking that it may be kind of fun to leave the house again someday without the connectivity and just simply go with the flow.

A Somewhat Pricey Click of the Shutter

I am trying not to obsess about it. I really am trying not to obsess about it. Truly. But, my camera broke yesterday. It fell while attached to a tripod from atop a pile of books which were admittedly somewhat haphazardly placed atop a height-adjustable coffee table - one metre max. I was attempting to photograph my CD collection one by one and HAD to get the height just right; attempting perfection, which is truly impossible in this, or any, form of art. The light was admittedly not great, but flat, even and workable; overall decent. It was mostly overcast, which allowed for a soft afternoon light to fill my fifth floor home-office.  I snapped a test shot. It looked good, but I needed more height and perhaps better light. Why am I even attempting to photograph my record collection? More books added; these ones not as sturdy as the hefty Language Files 12, which guided me through my first graduate school class.

I added Sociolinguistics and Language Education to the makeshift table, and snapped another test shot. And when I went to adjust the CD on top of the recently purchased Kenwood CD player - BAM! A noise I was not expecting or wanting to hear. Camera down; sprawled on the floor in a most vulnerable position! All is well, I thought; everything still looks intact - screen is still ok, lens not impacted. Phew. But wait, where is the shutter button!? Where in the Sam Snead-Hell is the shutter button! A piece of copper staring up at me through a vacant hole instead of the round shutter release. Panic. Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? scream into my conscience. Ok, this really happened. I am aware of this now. My beloved image-producing rectangular box is broken. The sooner I can accept this the sooner I can take some sort of action to try and remedy the situation. Search the floor and make sure you find all the parts. Ok, there is the missing spring. Attempt to put it all back together. Not working. Panic again. Ok, what next? I cycle to the nearest camera store, a place that has kindly fixed my camera before, to get their input on the damage at hand. Turns out, they had never seen such a trauma to a camera before and informed me they unfortunately have no way of repairing it in the store. The only hope is to send it off to a third-party repair shop or perhaps even directly to Fujifilm. I do not catch everything he is explaining to me, but enough to understand that:

a) this could be pricey

b) it may take up to a month

c) there are no guarantees it can be replaced

I take a deep breath and ask the kind salesperson to please send it off for the attempted repair. He takes a quick inventory of all items they are sending: camera body, lens cap, camera strap, battery, and the broken shutter button parts. While waiting for him to process all the paperwork, I browse around the store - all the cameras sort of staring back at me saying things like "we are here if you need us, but we cost a pretty penny, so choose wisely." I see my current camera amongst the crowd - same make, model, color, condition, price. I am tempted to buy it right then and there. Forget asking my wife. I need a camera and I need it now. My identity depends on it. I don't buy the camera, but later check online at home to see if it is still available (obsessing about it), and find out it had been sold that afternoon. Ok, relax. There are plenty more, but not really. They are difficult to find. And expensive. Nearly double the price of what I paid back in 2019. In the meantime, I am trying to find someone or something to blame. Why did this have to happen? I made sure to take the utmost care of this camera - I cleaned it weekly, always kept a lens cap on and secured it in its travel pouch when not in use. Accept. Accept. Accept.

Two weeks pass and I am suffering withdrawals from not being able to make images I want to make. I have my smartphone camera, but it is not quite the same. Not nearly as fun. It just does not react to light and subjects the way I think it should. Ok, I’ll go  practice my golf game. Take my mind off of the camera for a while. My smartphone rings while I am practicing a different type of ridiculous shooting and I am greeted with the news from the camera store that since there are no more parts being made for this particular camera, it cannot be fixed. I am again heartbroken, but I accept it. And I can no longer concentrate on hitting that little white ball at arbitrary targets.

I decide to take action as having a camera such as this is important to me, to my vision as a photographer, and helps me to feel calm amidst the storm of craziness this world often has brewing. I notice online that the camera store has the exact same model as mine at one of their shops in Tokyo. I head back to the camera store to retrieve my unusable camera and ask the clerk to have this particular camera sent to Kobe so I can check it out. Two days later it arrives from Tokyo. I withdraw enough cash to pay for it on the spot because if it is in decent shape as the online photographs of it suggest, I will likely buy it. The photographs did not lie, as they often are incapable of doing, and after handing over the cash, I have my camera back. It’s back!

So what did I learn from this ordeal? Well, that this really was not that much of an ordeal. It is something that simply happened. I did not try to break my camera. I was using it to photograph my record collection and it happened to fall, break, and cost me a lot of money and stress in the process. Sure I could have been more careful when propping it on a stack of books. Sure I could have not even bothered taking photos that day. Surely this could have been prevented. But that is not living. And it will not deter me from taking photographs in the future. I just may think twice about using books as a makeshift tripod. Live. Learn. Let go. Move on.