Does travel help you see the world differently?
There's a particular kind of jet lag that has nothing to do with time zones. You land back in your own house and for a few days, none of it looks quite the way it used to.
I recently returned from two weeks in Italy and I always marvel at how different our sky looks in Florida. It won’t seem unusual in a few days. My house feels big and airy; if you’ve been in my house you know that won’t last for long!
Travel does that. It doesn't just show you somewhere new, it briefly recalibrates how you look at somewhere old. For a few days, your own life gets treated like a place you're visiting for the first time, and everything in it gets a second look.
As a photographer, this is partly why I like coming home. Why, pray tell, were the hardest beds in the “spa + wellness” hotels?!
Bear sculpture with a view of the Dolomiti in Molveno, Italy
Here's the thing about seeing for a living: the eye can get lazy in familiar spaces. You stop noticing the paint (or the lack thereof) on the front door for the same reason you stop noticing the sound of your own refrigerator, repetition trains you to tune it out. It's an occupational hazard. The muscle that notices beautiful, ordinary light is the same muscle I need switched on for every session, and it's the first thing that goes soft when I'm not actively using it.
Modern boat taxi and vintage gondolas at a boatyard in Venice, Italy
So when I come home from somewhere that forced me to really look at light, at color, at the small human details of a place, I try to hold onto that state as long as I possibly can before the routine swallows it back up. Notice the fabulous kitchen wallpaper instead of assuming I already know what it looks like. Treat the lap pool like I'm scouting it for a shoot.
Traffic jam in the canals of Venice, Italy
It fades. It always fades. Within a week or two, the kitchen might go back to being just the kitchen. But for a little while, I get to borrow the eyes of someone seeing my life for the first time and that's a genuinely useful thing to have access to, both as a person and as a photographer.
wandering in Venice
View of Verona from the hillside on our bike tour
Typical menu in Verona. Can you see the reason we kept walking? Note the DECAVAL. Common in Verona.
Cowbells jingling along our hike in Alpe de Suisse, Dolomiti, Italy
