JPG: Stories: Photo Essay: Prague with a Heavy Heart

Prague with a Heavy Heart

By Keith King

28 Aug 2007

Before traveling to Europe, I could only imagine the photographic possibilities that awaited in this amazing place. Once my dream of European travel came true, I visited Paris, France; Dresden, Germany; Prague, Czech Republic as well as a variety of other small locations.

While in Prague, I was staying in a hostel and my digital SLR, lenses and memory cards were stolen. A feeling of devastation only partially describes my emotions. It was toward the end of my trip so I lost many photos including protests in Paris at the time. But I wasn't going to give in to dissapointment and look back on the trip with regret. This was an impossible thought. If I could even take one photo with a hint of beauty in it, I felt like I'd cheated failure.

A camera shop was recommended to me in Prague that had an enourmous collection of very nice cameras and not so nice cameras. The camera shop man didn't know English and the only bit of Czech I knew came from a pocket book translator. Using the book, I had him show me three cameras within my extremely small price range (it was toward the end of my trip so I was getting poor).

After the store owner stayed open past closing time for me, I purchased an old Canon manual camera with a 50mm f/1.8 lens and two rolls of film. I feel like the photos I took somehow made everything alright. I wouldn't have put forth such effort in them if they didn't mean so much to me. The main streets and side streets of Prague were my stomping grounds of discovery for a couple of days while I searched with a heavy heart for photos that I could soulfully capture, of a city that almost captured me.