My way of resolving the dilemma is to use the process as the means to generate meaningful exchanges, with people and landscapes, that would never otherwise occur. But I have also lived that moment with the anticipation of the imagined photograph. There is the inevitable disappointment upon opening up the boxes of slides, or scanning the contacts. Robin is acutely familiar with this. I seem to go into the deepest depression for a day and a half.
Nothing is as it was remembered.
I have to be reminded, yet again, that this act of photography is about making a parallel reality to the one that I experienced. And then the gems start appearing. Robin is bemused, yet again. The alternate photographic reality asserts itself. So it may well not be the Skellig Islands and the sun that is going to be the memorable photographic image of the trip.