A few days ago, working on my spring break itinerary for Italy, I found myself thinking: what kinds of images do I want to get? Clicking through my “International Travel” folder in Lightroom, wincing at a lot of failed images and a few “almost” ones, it occurred to me that I want to capture some images of the people that live in the places I will be passing through, in addition, of course to capturing life in those places. How did this happen?
Like most landscape photographers, I have learned to stand with zen-like patience for hours waiting for that 1/30 of a second when self-absorbed, selfie-stick, tourist girl steps left out of my frame while the youngest of four spastic children exits stage right, at which time I spring from sleeping-yet-standing stillness to pound on the remote shutter release as many times as I can before fancy camera man walks up and fires a pop-up flash shot at the distant landscape he expects to find illuminated at 6500 Kelvin when he uploads it to his MacBook Air/Pro Retina Screen 30 minutes later at his 5 star hotel. To avoid this often-hopeless scenario, I will sleep in my truck, get up before dawn, and hike 50 miles, all to glory at being alone in wild nature. And now I want to photograph people?
On only one occasion have I purposely set out to document the lives of people I’ve encountered in my travels—the Hoi An Fishmongers I included in my Projects Section here. I love those images, but what made me decide one morning when I walked into the fish market that I should do that? I know the answer, because the image popped into my head the minute I asked the question. It was made on Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, a gut reaction to a powerful scene, and because I got the shot that captured all the complex and contradictory things I was feeling about my visit there, it stuck with me. Here is the image:
“Inexorably, Cambodia, 2010.
I realize now, looking back, that this image sat in my catalog, germinating, telling my landscape shooting self something it didn’t want to hear—this matters to you; you have something to say, you could say it with your photography, you should say that with your photography. In that sense, I think the Hoi An Fish Market project was a reaction to this experience, 4 years later. Why did it take so long?
One of my takeaways, and the main reason this post seemed worth sharing, is that pigeonholing yourself as a this or that photographer in your own mind is just another way to get in your own way. It’s yet another example of the problem of the pre-conceived notions we drag around in our head about what is worth photographing, what we photograph, about what we expect to find—versus what is there in front of us.
I don’t have any easy answers for this problem, presumably faced by many photographers, but I think I will start by making a print of this photo to take in my camera bag to Italy. How do you get your expectations out of the way of your photography?