Struggling to Find Balance

Thoughts, feelings, emotions? I am literally in heaven right now. This is like dream conditions. I'm so excited. Hey, thanks for being here. I know I've been a little slow with these uploads and it means a lot that you stick around. If you're new here, I'm Christian. I'm an outdoor adventure photographer living on the road full-time for three and a half years. Last month I parked the van and left it behind for three weeks to explore Italy and Switzerland. And as I'm finally sitting down to edit this, it's been a while since I've returned home from Europe. I've been putting off this edit for so long, I nearly abandoned it altogether. I've formed the bad habit of waiting too long to piece together footage and with this trip, the amount of clips that I'd piled up was almost too much. But more importantly, I just didn't know what kind of story I wanted to tell. I'm still learning how to pick up the camera and hit record during the less photo worthy scenes. I guess in a way, I'm having to unlearn a lot of the habits I've formed as a landscape photographer. I'm starting to realize that the normal moments are sometimes even more important than the epic, beautiful ones. But anyway, in the end, I decided it was better to share rather than worry about it being perfect or even making sense. That's life anyway, isn't it? Just one big, beautiful mess. So here's mine from last month where we left off in Switzerland. This is what it's like to eat dinner with a bunch of photographers. You got enough there? This is how I like it. I can't figure that out. She's the crust leaver. That might be too dark. I don't know. Here we have Nathaniel Wise getting his tree frames in the wild. So these are large trees and they're so soft to the touch, like velvet. Just go stand on that rock right there. Okay, we're going to go stand on the rock. We went the wrong way. We're trying to find the trail before sunset. What? Where? Oh, everything's black. My lens got... Maybe they're just stopping the Swiss side. We're okay. We made it to Italy. Oh, there's a castle. Oh, hello. We're in Italy. We're in Italy. We're in the walled city. All right, we just parked. There's one here and there's one here. Yeah, let's go there. So it's just back here, I think. Here we have Ali in our Italian abode. Wow, beautiful butterflies. Here we have Nathaniel and our kitchen with René roaming as usual. Here's our other little kitchen table. And here is one bedroom. This is our bedroom. Very nice, very spacious. And we have bathroom here, bathroom here. It's getting dark. Bedroom here. It's too dark to film. Oh my gosh. Here we go. Here's the last bedroom. So pretty spacious. This is home sweet home for the next four days. Meanwhile, I'm posting on Instagram. We're fully touristing enough right now, but look at that mountain. All right, good morning. It's the next day. We woke up at 3.45 a.m. and it's now 4.30 and we're heading back up to the trailhead to hopefully catch an epic sunrise up at Seceda. Wish us luck. We're hoping for some good conditions, golden light. It is 3.5 miles, 3,000 feet elevation gain, and it is freaking cold outside. It's like 25 degrees. So yeah, it's going to be a workout and super chilly, but here we go. Are you stoked? He's so stoked. It's so cold. Hi. How's it going? Taking a break. Let's drink coffee. Lately, I've been struggling to balance my time between photography and videography, especially when the light is nice. I'm torn between taking photos and filming and also whether I should be in the frame or just focus on the scenery. It's kind of frustrating sometimes being in front of the camera when I really just want to be shooting, but those scenes also make it easier to tell a story. So I'm grateful for the times my friends help capture moments that would be hard to do otherwise. But to be real with you, I sometimes find it challenging to travel with other creatives. In a lot of ways, every day starts to feel like work. It starts to feel like everything has to be captured and we all feel pressure to do it in our own creative way. Sometimes it was difficult to know which moments were real and which moments were just for the camera. I feel like I'm forever walking this fine line of artist and subject, creative and participant. It's difficult when those roles spill over into your personal life, when your co-workers and colleagues are also your friends. It's easy enough to piece together a string of beautiful moments, throw a happy song over it and call it a day. But that just isn't the whole story. Like deciding whether to take a photo or film a video, I guess I'm still just searching for the right balance of sharing the carefree and beautiful moments of this lifestyle alongside the difficulties and challenges. Because there's always a little bit of both. These layers are insane. They're everywhere. Thoughts, feelings, emotions? I am literally in heaven right now. This is like dream conditions. I'm so excited. It's turning so pink. Like look at these peaks. This is so crazy. I'm freaking out. This is like my dreamscape right here. So pretty. If this trip has taught me anything, it's that I want more moments with my friends that don't involve a camera. More sunsets and sunrises spent just enjoying each other's company rather than trying to capture it. Because I'm lucky to have some pretty amazing people in my life, and 50 years from now I'd like to say that I made the most of my time with them. I originally thought this would be the last video to round out the Europe trip, but I was wrong. Going through this footage, there were entire days and adventures I'd completely forgotten about. We did so much in our time over there, it just wasn't easy to remember it all. I guess that's another reason why I love having this channel. It motivates me to make these videos, which are fun to share, but they also serve as a visual journal of sorts. Memories made and moments shared that I don't ever want to forget. So thanks for being here, and I will see you in the next one.