[Grace] New Zealand (in 1 Minute 10 Seconds)

Facts about me:

            - My name is Grace Beal and, as of today, I am 15 years 4 months and 13 days old

            - I am hopelessly in love with the world.

            - I love to adventure and explore everywhere I can.

            - I want to capture every part of life through a camera.

While these facts do not encompass every part of my personality, they do manage to represent a surprisingly large portion of who I am. The culmination of all these facts leads to one overarching passion of mine: filming and editing short videos.

Let me give you some background.

My interest in photography peaked after getting an Instagram account (because, let's be honest, it is hard to look at beautiful photographs and not want to take your own). This led to me taking photography as an elective in seventh grade, where I learned how to use a camera and how to compose an image. For a while, photography kept me occupied and I loved capturing the beauty in the world through a lens. But I am a fickle human being, and I soon looked for something beyond photography. I settled for film. For me, the making and editing of short videos is like photography - but better. Not only do you have to film the correct shot, but you get to overlay it to music and edit the clips accordingly.

Another fact about me:

            - I am afraid of forgetting.

I see some of you rolling your eyes. "She's just fifteen," some of you might muse, chuckling at the thoughts of an adolescent. "No one forgets anything of any importance until old age."

False.

Here is my evidence to back that up:
Sometimes I forget how raindrops feel on my face.
Sometimes I forget how much I love my dog.
Sometimes I forget the power music has.
Sometimes I forget how beautiful the world is.
Sometimes I forget how blessed I am to have a wonderful family.
Sometimes I forget how lucky I am.

One of my goals in life is to never forget what is important (and it is a good thing I don't place homework in that category because I have forgotten that a million times over). I never want to be in a place in which I do not appreciate life in its fullness. For me, that means documenting my life. Whether that is through photos or words or film or music (ahaha, just kidding I have no musical ability), I want to be able to have records of everything I have gone through, good and bad.

At this particular moment, my desire to chronicle my life gets narrowed down to a specific desire to chronicle this amazing trip. If at any second I start to forget how lucky I am to have this opportunity, that is when I forget what is important. In order to never let that happen, I made a video surrounding the first leg our journey: New Zealand.