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Beauty through Brokenness

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I took this photo less than a month after moving to Albania. We had visited a small village a little way up the mountain just outside Pogradec. The border between Albania and Macedonia cuts right down the mountain, and right next to the border is this building. It’s a bit old, but looks older because of how dilapidated it has become over the past few years. I wandered around the inside of the building with my camera trying to find some interesting things to shoot. This frame stood out to me mostly because of the jagged glass shards obstructing the view of the forest on the other side. When I took the photos, that’s all I thought about. When I got home with the SD card and started editing, I realized that it seemed to represent something more…

If you don’t know the history of Albania, I’d urge you to do some quick research. But an extremely brief overview is that the entire country was ruled by a communist dictator for over 40 years. Despite being overthrown almost 30 years ago, the lasting effects of the regime is still found in different places around the country. That being said, there is a beauty that is able to shine through. There is beauty in the natural landscape, there is beauty in the people, there is beauty in the culture, the traditions, and even the language. It is an undoubtedly beautiful country. But, you have to be able to see through the brokenness. I’m not saying to ignore it but rather to see it, accept it, and choose to see the beauty as well.

So, when I pulled this photo up in Adobe Lightroom to edit it, it hit me. This photo represents Albania. Beauty through brokenness. It’s impossible to look at the view without seeing the shattered glass. We can spend all our time talking about how terrible it is that this window is broken, or we can choose to accept that and look past it to appreciate the beauty on the other side.

Hopefully, over time, the window can be fixed. But let’s not let the fact that it’s broken cause us to forget the beauty on the other side.

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Freedom

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March 13. Everyone knows what that date signifies. Sure, it may fluctuate a bit from country to country, but everyone in the world had a mutual experience at the beginning of March. I don’t need to get into it.

For me, March 13 is the day I was told to not come into the office. Lockdown measures had spread their way through every corner of Albania and the proceeding days had seen schools, restaurants, and public transportation coming to a halt. Now, it was our turn.

I spent most of the lockdown working from home building a website. Filling spare time with lots of YouTube, podcasts, Netflix, and the occasional chat with a roommate that spent his time in online school or playing video games. I would sit out on the balcony of my flat soaking up the sun as I watched the police on the street stopping passing cars and pedestrians, checking for the proper paperwork. I watched as groups of teenagers rode their bikes up and down the road, not worried about the policemen. I wish I could be as carefree, but I wasn’t willing to risk a fine just for a casual stroll. The most that would happen to those high school kids was a cop telling them to go home, which would likely result in the group just moving along to a different part of town, unbothered.

As I sat, my mind would inevitably wander. I would day dream about what life would be like if I was allowed out of my house for more than just an essential run to the grocery store. I sat for hours and stared into the hills that rise up behind the apartment buildings across the street. Day after day I scan the hills, noticing little dirt pathways crisscrossing their way to the top likely formed by herds of goats as they wander around the mountains. As many of the surrounding hills that I’ve been in, this one is an exception. My calves haven’t felt the burn of this incline. I haven’t seen the view from this peak.

That’s when I decided. Not necessarily on a particular day, but during the long hours of lockdown, the long hours of staring at the hills as they turn green with the coming of spring while we sit inside waiting to be allowed to wander without penalty. I decided that as soon as it was possible, I would climb this hill and again truly appreciate the freedom of being outdoors.

Again, the exact day escapes me, but when the lockdown measures eased up a bit we were allowed out with fewer restrictions, but with a curfew of 5pm. I didn’t let the time go to waste, and the first chance I got I was out the door. Calves burning, nostrils finally reintroduced to the smell of dirt, I climbed the hill. After the first five minutes weaving through alleyways between stone houses, I found the pathway that I had been staring at for the past four weeks.

As I climbed I kept looking over my shoulder as the city slowly grew smaller. I didn’t plan to take any photos, so I was hiking without the weight of a backpack on my shoulders - a rare occurrence for me. I followed a few goat trails until I stumbled across what seemed to be a service road for the electrical lines that rose and fell through the hills around Pogradec. The road wound up behind the peak I had been eyeing for a month and I lost sight of the city.

Rounding one more bend in the road, I noticed a rocky pathway that was either a goat trail of a runoff for water. I didn’t care either way, it was heading north, which is the direction I wanted to finally have a different view of the town I had been locked in for 30 days.

Within two minutes I came over the crest of the hill and was welcomed with what I would argue is the best vantage point of Pogradec: a panoramic view of Lake Ohrid, sparkling in the morning sun, surrounded by hills and mountains on all sides. The red roofs of Pogradec below by the lake shore provide a contrast to the fresh greenery of spring. Huge clouds float lazily by blissfully unaware of thousands of people below that are finally able to appreciate the blue sky yet again.

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Something New

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I make videos, I take photos, I’m not a writer. But if my past has taught me anything, it’s that if you want to get better at something you have to do it. Again and again and again. I suppose that’s the short answer of why I started writing, but there is a longer answer as well…

I make videos and take photos for fun. I also make videos and take photos for work. This was something I had strived after for a number of years, and I love it. I love the fact that every day I get to do something that I truly enjoy. However, it comes with its downsides. For instance, when work becomes busy with video projects, I lose my motivation to make videos purely for my own enjoyment. I wouldn’t say that it kills my passion, but it definitely can lead to some level of burnout. So, I decided to exercise my brain in a different way.

I may be wrong on this - because I’m not a scientist - but it feels like writing exercises different things in my head than shooting and editing videos does. I spend so much time on creating visuals that I needed something to be able to retreat to when I am feeling tired, or unmotivated to create videos. Maybe writing will give me a breath of fresh air from constantly staring into a camera screen.

Going hand in hand with this, I’ve realized that I take photos mainly for the visual aspect of it. I take the photo that would get the most reaction on social media, even staging them at times to get the most out of the frame as possible. The problem I see here is that when I look at the photos I typically don’t see stories as much as I see, “Oh yeah, I moved my van there and made my friend sit in that spot because it was the most aesthetically pleasing.”

A few weeks ago I met a woman who has been a photographing different aspects of Albania for the better part of the last three decades, Jutta Benzenberg. During my conversation with her, and hearing her talk about the photos that she takes I realized that there are two main types of stories that a photo can tell. The first is obviously the story of what is actually happening in a photo, which is obviously important but it’s something that can typically be derived by just looking at the photo itself without any further explanation.

The second type of story that a photo can tell is the contextual story. By that I mean the story that you can’t understand unless you were in that very spot when the photo was taken. I was looking through one of Jutta’s photo books and came across a photo that I don’t think I would have even saved had it been on my camera. There was a man, squatting down on the front steps of a house, but half the frame was covered by the out of focus head of a horse that seemed to be passing through the frame. I pointed this particular photo out, and asked why she chose to not only keep it, but to have it printed in a book. She proceeded to tell me the contextual story around the photo, that they man was a school teacher in another village and had could no longer walk the distance, so he needed to use the horse to get to school every day. She highlighted that the head of the horse basically covered half of the man’s face which, to her, made it seem like the two are one. The man cannot have his fully functioning life without that horse. My appreciation grew for that particular photo, and now it sticks in my brain, which is a far different reaction than my first impression of “Meh.”

After hearing about the backstory, and further conversations with Jutta, I realized that very few of my photos had stories like this and the ones that did almost no one knew the story. So I’ve decided to write. I’ve decided to make an effort to take photos that may not be the best for Instagram, but the ones that have stories. And that is where the writing comes in; to tell those stories.

I make videos, I take photos, I’m not a writer. But I’m trying to be.

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Reconsider

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Since buying my van, I’ve tried to go out camping or traveling in it as much as I possibly can. Between my normal day job and the van having modifications done on it, this hasn’t been exactly easy. So when the opportunity presents itself I typically do whatever I can to ensure that it happens.

About a week ago, a few friends of mine suggested that we go for a Saturday night camping trip to Lake Prespa - a large lake that borders Albania, Greece, and Macedonia. It is about a 40 minute drive, so nothing too crazy, but more significant than just parking somewhere close to Pogradec and sleeping.

The days leading up to our trip the weather had been a bit fickle. Each morning we would have rain - sometimes quite heavy - and then the sun would come out and dry everything to the point that you wouldn’t even know it had been raining. Naturally, this resulted in us checking the weather frequently. As anyone who has looked at weather reports would know, they aren’t ever 100% reliable. But each day that week the reports had been almost spot on which gave us even more confidence that Saturday would be no different - rain, and lots of it. We made the decision to just play it by ear and wait to decide what to do when the time came.

I woke up Saturday morning with a headache. While not an uncommon occurrence for me, it does affect my motivation levels to do things like camping. To make things worse, the sky had opened up over night and was absolutely dumping buckets. I texted one of the guys to see if he still wanted to go. He was hesitant. But, he said, another of our group was insisting. They asked me to meet them for a coffee to discuss and make a final decision.

When I got outside the rain had let up slightly but not entirely. We started chatting about when to leave, and what to do. The idea was floated that we could go, and if the weather got really bad we could always turn around and come back. Worst case scenario was we go for a drive and have lunch by Prespa before coming home. I still wasn’t too keen. Within a couple of minutes, the clouds blew over and the sun came beaming through a clear blue sky. It was all the motivation I needed. We parted ways and agreed to meet a bit later to start the drive.

In the two hours that it took us to get things together the sun had come and gone a few times, and each time it left the rain came through. We began our drive with the windshield wipers on, and with high hopes that when we arrived at Prespa those droplets would be gone entirely. As we drove towards the mountain we would have to cross to get to the other lake, the clouds didn’t look too promising.

Knowing that if it was too bad, we could easily turn around and go home to sleep in our warm, dry beds, we pressed on. Still hoping for the best, but knowing that worst wouldn’t be that bad. As we crossed over the pass, up ahead a small sliver of a rainbow showed itself in the sky. A sign of hope. Because, obviously, there couldn’t be a rainbow without the sun, right?

Coming down the other side of the mountain we were greeted by the sight of Lake Prespa. Sun coming from the west, and rain in the northeast. We pressed on, still hoping for the last of the rain to clear out before we settled.

The final leg of the drive was through the sunlight. We knew that we were surrounded by rainclouds, but we had made it this far and we definitely weren’t going to go home without giving this the dedication it deserved. We came to our campsite which ended up being surprisingly dry despite the scattered rain throughout the day. As we set up camp (me finding the most level place to park, and a few of the other guys setting up their tents) the rain drizzled. But by now, we had committed. We were doing this and at this point it would take a torrential downpour to stop us.

As we sat around the fire chatting and laughing we watched the rainclouds move along the mountain on the opposite side of the lake from us. Constantly being alert in case we would want to jump into the van or tents to avoid being completely soaked. A few hours passed and the moon rose shining brightly. It looked like we were in the clear. Around 8pm, one of the guys looked up at the mountain again and noticed a faint light in the sky… he and I had talked about something like this before, but I didn’t expect to ever see it. And I especially never thought I’d be in a position to take photos of it.

It was a rainbow, without the sun.

(Yes, technically, it was by the sunlight reflected off the moon, but just let me have this one okay?…)

Not only did I not know this phenomenon existed, but even if I did know I wouldn’t have expected to witness it. And the only reason I had the opportunity was because I didn’t give in to my initial, gut reaction of being pushed inside by the rain and my throbbing head. So many times in my life I have had to make seemingly unimportant decisions about things like this. The more it happens, the more I realize that even if I am absolutely miserable in the moment and am regretting my decision, once the experience is over I am almost always happy that I went. I am a firm believer that we grow more during the challenges than from the things that come easy. So, let’s reconsider more. Rather than looking at decisions based on “How do I feel about it right now?” let’s look at them in the light of “What will I learn from this? And how might I grow?”

Thalassophile

A few nights ago I watched a documentary on Netflix called My Octopus Teacher. It’s a very simply put together film about a South African photographer and filmmaker, Craig Foster, who, upon reaching a level of burn out, decides to go back to where he spent most of his time as a child; diving in kelp forests off the coast of South Africa. While diving he comes across an octopus in the water and the entire documentary is about his connection with the octopus and what he learns or observes from it.

Now, I don’t want to write about a movie I watched - I think this basic synopsis is more than enough - but I do want to make a few comments on the feelings it stirred in me. I’m sure many people will watch this documentary and come away thinking about how interesting the common octopus is, or maybe learn things they didn’t know about aquatic life, but for me it was something different. It wasn’t the character that affected me as much as the setting.

Back in 2014, when I lived in Hawaii, I developed a connection with water that I am still trying to understand. There was something about the sheer power of the waves at the surface, combined with the calmness underneath that completely enraptured me. Being able to sink under the chaotic surface and be completely engulfed in the life below was an escape for me. Unfortunately, due to my severe lack of gills, it was an escape that I could only experience for short periods of time which only made me crave it even more.

After leaving Hawaii in 2015 I didn’t live close by to another body of water until moving to the shores of Lake Ohrid in August 2018, and over the course of those three years I had forgotten the pull that the underwater world had for me. So that brings me back to My Octopus Teacher…

When Craig opens the film he talks about going out into the water and exploring the underwater world. He talks about the kelp being like a three dimensional forest that he can approach from any angle, almost like he is flying. He was “walk” along the forest floor, or “fly” above the treetops. These descriptions, and the visuals that accompanied them, were what brought all my memories of diving in Hawaii flooding back. And now, I live next to the deepest lakes in the Balkans and have another opportunity to chase this escape.

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Sanctuary

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Having lived in Albania for two years now, I have a pretty good lay of the land - especially the land surrounding Pogradec. Back in May, I bought a 4x4 van and I’ve made good use of it exploring even more of the roads that crisscross in the mountains overshadowing Lake Ohrid. That being said, there was one spot that I hadn’t taken the van yet, because I was waiting for the right opportunity.

The primary reason I hadn’t gone to this particular spot was because I wasn’t 100% sure the van could make it. You see, with just normal street tires there are some things that I won’t make an effort to try. I’ve driven most of that road before, but there’s a small section at the end that made me a bit nervous. It’s quite likely that the van could make it, but because of my limited experience driving on these roads I just didn’t want to risk getting stuck when I’m driving around alone.

However, there was another slightly smaller reason. This particular spot is a small reservoir in the hills around the village of Çervenakë (and when I say village, I mean like six or seven houses total). I was introduced to this spot by a friend and it is kind of his secluded getaway. He uses it as a retreat, or even a reward, from the normal working life. I didn’t want to go here alone, because it feels a bit sacred. I don’t want to take over his sanctuary and make it mine, so I’ve made this rule for myself to only go there if he is coming along.

So that’s why, after owning my van for the last few months, this is the first time I’ve brought it to this exact spot. As I partially expected, I made it in and out without any problems with the road, but the reward wouldn’t have been the same had I been on my own.

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Krujë [Albania]

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A few days ago, the municipality of Krujë put together some events for tourists in their city. The first evening, there was free entrance to the museum in the castle, and the following morning there was a food fair. Women from around Krujë prepared dishes that have been in their families for generations to share with the visitors. Meanwhile, for entertainment, a group of musicians dressed in traditional Albanian outfits while they played a variety of traditional songs. A group of local women started some dancing and beckoned for the tourists to join them.

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Vienna [Austria]

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After a couple of days in Bratislava, Slovakia, I hopping on a bus for a short ride to Vienna. In comparison to the other cities I had explored on this trip, Vienna was very large and very spread out. I did not have as much time here as I would have liked, but I was able to wander a bit during my 30ish hour stay and grab some photos.