Better 1 or 2?

The maps are almost made, the photos just about edited, the chapters stacking up. We're in the final countdown to launching Blaze Travel Guides this August. With publication, however, comes responsibility. We are of course responsible to our runners to provide the most accurate, most comprehensible, most informative and most reliable content we can. Yet we are also responsible to the people and places we are writing about. In our own way, we are telling their story. In ten pages or so, we have to communicate words and images that allow people to begin to grasp what this faraway place is all about. Every single bit of content matters in this challenge, and every one must be thought through.

Recently a photographer friend has been helping me with an inner debate about some photographs for the Sarajevo chapter, which are posted above. While the shots are of the same spot in the city, the feel of each one, and the lives each one portrays are different. One is a solid shot of an important setting in a beautiful history (right), the other is a sort of more chaotic snapshot of a summer afternoon street scene (left). Artistically, the first is a better photo, but the second is more true to what Sarajevo today, fifteen years after the war, is really all about.
And while every guidebook will have a shot of the Sebilj and Old Bascarija (even after writes and rewrites of that chapter, I still can't spell that word), not every guidebook will make an effort to communicate the fact that Sarajevo, today's Sarajevo, wants more than anything to move past its tragic recent past and in to a space where people can lead normal lives. A space where people can sit in a cafe without worrying about shrapnel, take their kids outside without worrying about having to duck and cover as a family behind a bombed-out tram car, a place where friends and lovers can slowly stroll the old streets, in the sun.

And even, dare we say it, a place where people can go for a good run.

Like this guy is doing.

As a company, Blaze Travel Guides is legally responsible to our clients - our readers, our sponsors, our advertisers - to provide accurate information and decent exposure.

As runners, writers, travelers, and human beings, we are responsible for more. We are responsible to the people, places, and experiences we happen upon, people whose stories don't always get told. As two young women determined to run the world, we are guaranteed to stumble upon some fascinating stories. It is our responsibility to, with every word we write, map we create, and photo we produce, to share them.

From there, we have to figure out whether they should go on page 3 :o).