Recently, I put up a Web site about Dan’s and my trip to Turkey and Greece (http://www.songless.com/greece/). That site contains a (large) number of photographs, perhaps 150 of them, distilled down from the 650 or so that we took on the trip. By “we” in the previous sentence, what I mean is almost entirely “I”.

“There aren’t any photographs of you,” noted my friend Karen.

I too noticed the lack of pictures of me when I was editing the pictures, and believe me, I went through all 650 of them. What there was, was a lot of pictures showing the back of Dan in the forward distance just as he was about to vanish around some corner. There were also a lot of pictures showing streets and places empty of people where Dan had vanished around that corner just a moment or two before.

I spent many a happy hour in Turkey and Greece trailing behind Dan. We like the same kind of places and enjoy exploring them together (well, almost together) for hours on end. I explore with camera in hand, stopping to see if there is a picture in this place and if so to frame it and take it. I view places in two dimensions delineated by a frame. I have to stop and look. I have to stop and digest what I’m seeing and compose the shot to capture the essence of the place. I have to stand still to experience a place.

And Dan has to come back and get me when he’s gotten too far ahead of me and I get lost and don’t know where he went. Because Dan doesn’t experience places the way I do. He experiences places in glorious three dimensions by moving through them. He is restless. He wants to explore everything, map in hand, never pausing. Because for him, that’s the essence of the experience.

And here I thought we had both gone on the same vacation.