Has travelling brought you any inspiration?

The main advantages of travelling are to be able to see more of the world, to bear witness to beautiful sights that one would have otherwise not believed in its existence, to learn more about the culture of another country, to take that Instagram photo that you have always wanted to and for most of us, to just chill and relax in a bid to ditch all the stress and worries back at home.

But on a more personal level, has travelling brought you any inspiration? It certainly has for me! At the start of my European trip, I often came home with a feeling of dismay as it seemed that there was nothing but my memory to reminisce about the wonderful time and beautiful places that I had visited - and I am a very forgetful person! What about photos taken during the trip? Well, yes, I did take some photos but those photos were unable to evoke the particular emotions or feelings that I felt at that very instance during my travel and certainly did not do justice to what I have seen with my very own eyes .

Hoping to dispel any further feelings of regrets, I decided to venture deeper into one of my hobbies - drawing & painting! I have always loved arts since young but have never had the opportunity to spend time and effort on it. I soon started attending drawing classes in the hope that one day I will be able to draw and paint the beautiful places that I had visited in a way that described how I felt at that instance. For someone who has not drawn or paint anything in the past three decades, the learning curve was real steep! It literally felt like I was a toddler again, holding a pencil to doodle for the very first time! The good thing was that learning to draw and paint has somehow allowed me to view travelling in another perspective. I learned to be more observant about the places I was visiting, to take note of the wide variety of color found in nature, of the extent of color contrast, of how the foreground, middle ground and back ground created the synergic effect to create the beautiful scene. I started seeing the places that I am visiting as a form of art! I finally understood why some of the most famous pieces of arts by the renowned artists were done as they were travelling to different places! Travelling can be such an inspiration for arts!

Drawing of a scene from Étretat

Drawing and painting was certainly a good way to capture the mood and beauty of the places I had visited during my travels. However, to draw and paint a good piece of work requires time and the need to bring along the many pieces of art materials for my trip had slowly became a hassle. I needed something else that is hassle-free and able to capture what I needed to capture in the shortest time possible. This was when I thought about my other hobby - photography! I had been taking photographs all this while but I have never stepped out of the use of the “auto” mode of the camera - in other words, I have been letting the camera decide all the camera settings all this while and has never taken control of how I want my photos to turn out!

Photo taken at pont de Bir-Hakeim

In my attempt to acquire a deeper knowledge of photography, I started to subscribe to the YouTube channels of some of the famous photographers and learnt about how to perfect the composition of the photos, how to adjust the various camera settings to capture the different types of photographs and to get more inspiration from them to better my photography skills. I also started acquiring photography self-help books and most importantly, I started to bring my camera out more often and experiment using the other modes on my camera (and to stay away from the “auto mode”). It was certainly a long process! The ability to appreciate every scene as a piece of art, acquired through my drawing and painting classes, has certainly enabled me to pick up photography much easier than I had anticipated. Although my photography skills has improved much with time, there are still more that I can learn about in order to bring my skills to the next level. The desire to capture the marvelous sights seen on my travelling journey is certainly a great motivation for me to continue perfecting my photography skills!

Finally, other than arts and photography, travelling has also inspired me to set up this blog - to combine words, arts and photography to fully capture the beauty, mood and emotions of all the wonderful moments in my travelling journey!

So, has travelling brought you any inspiration?