Writing Travel

"The Amelie of photographers": Film lost in NYC blizzard delivered to owner in Paris by filmmaker Todd Bieber

Sorry about the long title. SEO habits die hard. This story about Todd Bieber's adventure after finding a lost roll of black-and-white 35mm film deserves as many readers as search engines can provide. I'm just sad that I didn't find and follow the narrative from the beginning.

To summarize, Todd Bieber finds a roll of film while skiing in Brooklyn's Prospect Park during the January blizzard. He develops the black-and-white images of iconic New York City locations and makes a film to share them in hope of reuniting them with their maker. His original YouTube video is picked up by ABC News, eventually amassing more than 1.5 million views. In a follow-up film, Todd is less hopeful about finding the owner but reports on the many contacts he has gained in the process. Finally, on March 9, he shares that the French owner of the photographs has contacted him, publishing a documentary of his trip to Europe to deliver the prints and negatives to their maker.

I don't watch ABC News. I don't spend a lot of time browsing YouTube videos. I follow my favorites and occasionally click through from Facebook on the latest hilarity. So how was I so lucky to have found this story? Checking out Darren Rowse's Digital Photography.School (I'm am email subscriber who rarely clicks through to the photography tip for the weekend),  I discovered that Peter West Carey of The Carey Adventures posts there. Duh. How did I miss that?  

Peter's discussion of what to do with old film cameras (of which I have more examples than any one woman could ever need) included a link to The Film Photography Podcast by Michael Raso. After a quick peek at MIchael's site, I chose the quickest route to connect with him: I followed him on Twitter, first browsing his recent Tweets. This one popped out:

Thanks to a month-old Tweet, I finally watched a series of videos by Todd Bieber, beginning with this one. Be sure to follow the story until the March 9 segment.

Niche blogging and neglect

Image by WritingTravel.com via Flickr

Yes, I've neglected this blog for the last month, and the fifth anniversary of publishing at WritingTravel.com has since passed, unmarked. In all that time, Writing Travel has refused to focus on its niche, which, I guess, is writing about travel or writing about travel writing. Instead, it's become the vehicle for whatever I wanted to say at the moment.

Yesterday, I launched a actual, honest-to-gosh niche blog, Traveling Pains, as a platform for a topic about which I can say, without pride, I am an expert. Content is still sketchy, and the design is spare, but I did finally use my license for Thesis on a start-from-scratch Wordpress site. I've had the idea kicking around for some years, but it wasn't until I discovered Liz Hamill Scott's blog on the same topic, Travels With Pain, that I overcame my fear of outing myself as an expert on coping with hidden disability and chronic pain.

In other matters, I've taken over cost and responsibility for National Travel Writing Month from Christine Gilbert of AlmostFearless.com. Christine has embarked on some exciting new travel projects with her infant in tow and decided she would have to let the site lapse when Ning.com began charging for their community sites. Impulsively, I jumped into the fray.

The next 30-day NaTraWriMo (say that five times) challenge begins in just two short weeks, on October 1, so please head over to the site and join in if you think you might enjoy an exercise in marketing and self-promotion for travel writers. 

There has been some interesting scuttlebutt about the folly of asking travel writers to send out 30 pitches in 30 days, and I'll be telling you more about that soon, as I review Tim Leffel's recent book Travel Writing 2.0.

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The 10-plus things I learned at TBEX '10

Here's my very personal list, in no set order, of the idiosyncratic things I learned at Travel Blog Exchange '10 hosted by Kim Mance and her Galavanting team in New York City this past weekend. (Forgive me, Spud Hilton. This story is about my trip, not my reader's vacation.)

In part, it's a list of "shoulds." Yes, I know all about the evil of should. I've succumbed to it before and certainly will again.

1. I should get out of the house more. Especially if I want to continue calling myself a travel blogger. 

2. I should post more often, for the same reason.

3. I need to converse in person with other intelligent adult humans more often. (See point 1.) I do this best in small groups or one-on-one. I'm happy enough in a large group, but I tend to drift to the perimeter of the crowd to become an observer.

4. Two cocktails in one evening is my absolute limit when indulging in a public venue. Thanks to Sean Keener of @Bootsnall and Pete Meyers of @Eurocheapo for helping me (finally) figure that out. That's not to say I won't have to relearn my lesson.

5. Travel blogging isn't just a young person's sport, but one should recognize one's limits. (See point 4.) One should also stay in training.

6. It's okay to be weird in the company of other travel bloggers.

7. I can live without my laptop and digital SLRs for a weekend, but I can't live without some way to connect to the Internet. 

8. AT&T 3G service in Manhattan isn't as groovy there as it is in other parts of the country. (See point 7.)

9. It is entirely possible to cultivate real human relationships sight unseen via social media and blogs. Proof: the joy of meeting Zach Everson, Meryl Pearlstein, Renee King, Doug Anweiler, Lola Akinmade, Kara Williams, Todd Lucier, Jennifer Miner, Mara Gorman, Craig Martin, Christine Cantera, Jennifer Huber, Robin Locker Lacey, Trisha Miller, and countless others for the first time in the flesh after long acquaintance online.

10. I'm still capable of hero(ine) worship. Cases in point: Pam Mandel (I hope you don't think I'm stalking you on Twitter), Evelyn Hannon (I read and reread your Journeywoman travel tips before every trip to a new place), Gary Arndt (Your travel porn feeds my fantasies, and I have to agree with your camera advice, although I'd much rather travel with the camera I don't yet have).

11. It will take me a bit of time to get used to referring to people by their real names when I know them so well by their Twitter handles. (See point 9. If I didn't call you out by name, it's because I'm still in the process of rebuilding my internal contact database.)

12. Going out on a limb to write in one's naturally quirky voice is good practice for a persnickety grammarian.

13. I received no compensation or sponsorship for this post or for attending TBEX. I have only myself to thank or blame. I would, however, consider help getting to Vancouver next year.