Frameless

Experiencing life as a motion picture

I’ve spent the past week riding a motorbike around southern Bali. Bobbing in and out of rice fields and corrugated metal villages, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I simply don’t have enough time to take pictures of all that is picturesque. Experiencing the landscape on a motorbike is much like watching a motion picture through my periphery as scene after scene blurs past me. But the best part is, on a bike, there is no frame. So often we chose to crop our view of the world to fit inside a casing. However, as of late, I’ve come to appreciate moments when I can experience life, frameless.

Frames come in many shapes in sizes — television sets, car windows, Instagram viewfinders. If we could take a picture of the entire world, we would, but because we can’t, we have to package moments into more manageable sizes. I like to think of creativity as problem solving within these constraints. Painters work within the constraint of the canvas, photographers within the scope of their cameras. As someone who loves to create and share content, I find myself constantly looking for frames that encapsulate a unique aspect of life. But there is danger in experiencing life through the filter of what can be shared.

On the road, some of the best moments are hard to put into words or capture in a photograph. How does one zoom out enough to convey the feeling of standing at the base of a colossal volcano or zoom in enough to preserve the folds of a elder’s weathered cheek? Sometimes I prefer to not even try — to simply let moments wash over me, knowing that I might never have a memento to transport me back to the memory. Choosing to travel without a camera has left me with far fewer vestiges from the past, but has also given me far distractions from the present.

This isn’t to say that I think taking videos and photographs throughout the day is an evil. I love flipping back through old pictures and using them to jog my memory of times that I may have otherwise forgotten. I simply hope to bring some consciousness to the times where my vision is framed. Trying to remove the frames and filters through which I view my life has created a sense of openness in my outlook. And as the wind hits me in the face as I drive down the road, I never feel more alive.