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Pauline
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I fixed the typo. I am loving the new camera!
Bruce Pollock
10+ Posts
I've been making photographs for a long time and have a darkroom full of cameras. I've experimented with this question of 'which camera when travelling' for quite a while. Rather than make a suggestion about a specific device, I'd offer a few other ways of looking at the problem.
First, I've found it very difficult to be both a photographer and a traveller at the same time. You can be one or the other but not both. What I mean is that to be a photographer requires time to explore a place at different times of the day and different light. Generally, and even for 'slow travellers', this can be a challenge. You're always holding up the others in your party. When you are a traveller, you have less control over light and time. You grab photos of what you can and sometimes you get lucky. Use a camera that suits your travel style. If you have more time, you may want more and bigger gear.
Second, what are you going to do with the images you capture? Print them, frame them and hang them on your wall? Make a photo book? Post them to your blog? Bury them on your computer or tablet and never look at them again? This decision really helps determine the best camera tool for the job. Printing requires a large, excellent quality file or negative. If you are going to only look at them on the web or your computer, the quality is less important because much of the quality is lost anyway.
Finally, don't let the act of making a photograph get in the way of actually experiencing the place you are visiting. As Susan Sontag said:
"Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photograph, and move on."
Perseus With the Head of Medusa (Cellini) Obverse. 2006 (Shot with a Konica C-35 rangefinder on Kodak Tri-X film. It looks much better printed on gelatin silver paper.
)
First, I've found it very difficult to be both a photographer and a traveller at the same time. You can be one or the other but not both. What I mean is that to be a photographer requires time to explore a place at different times of the day and different light. Generally, and even for 'slow travellers', this can be a challenge. You're always holding up the others in your party. When you are a traveller, you have less control over light and time. You grab photos of what you can and sometimes you get lucky. Use a camera that suits your travel style. If you have more time, you may want more and bigger gear.
Second, what are you going to do with the images you capture? Print them, frame them and hang them on your wall? Make a photo book? Post them to your blog? Bury them on your computer or tablet and never look at them again? This decision really helps determine the best camera tool for the job. Printing requires a large, excellent quality file or negative. If you are going to only look at them on the web or your computer, the quality is less important because much of the quality is lost anyway.
Finally, don't let the act of making a photograph get in the way of actually experiencing the place you are visiting. As Susan Sontag said:
"Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photograph, and move on."
Perseus With the Head of Medusa (Cellini) Obverse. 2006 (Shot with a Konica C-35 rangefinder on Kodak Tri-X film. It looks much better printed on gelatin silver paper.
)veronicafrance
100+ Posts
Sontag hits the nail on the head! It's important to me to take photos when I travel, but I still often stop, put the camera away, and just look.
Bruce,
Great insight, and I really like the shot mainly because it captures a moment, not a statue. The people sitting at the base of Perseus is what would draw me to take a shot like that. In the midst of great art they are lost in their daily activities, with few acknowledging the existence of the masterpiece.
When I travel I am usually trying to find things that capture the place, the moment, or the surroundings. Many times I have found faces do it the best. Right now I have limited access to my pictures, but here is an example of what I am talking about (Shot is very compressed).
This young man was carrying a block of ice in the Cairo market. The place was electric and yet he was lost in the task at hand. A few short months after I snapped this shot the world would experience the Arab Spring. His shirt seemed to be a harbinger of what was to come.
Today, I still wonder what happened to him - what was his destiny?
So back to topic. When I travel, I always try to take the time to enjoy and admire the Castle, the Statue, or the Cathedral, but the shot I am looking for is something that puts the place in that moment I am there. There are too many pros that have captured the famous stuff for me to try to replicate. The young man with the block ice brings vivid memories and experiences of the day for me.
Great insight, and I really like the shot mainly because it captures a moment, not a statue. The people sitting at the base of Perseus is what would draw me to take a shot like that. In the midst of great art they are lost in their daily activities, with few acknowledging the existence of the masterpiece.
When I travel I am usually trying to find things that capture the place, the moment, or the surroundings. Many times I have found faces do it the best. Right now I have limited access to my pictures, but here is an example of what I am talking about (Shot is very compressed).
This young man was carrying a block of ice in the Cairo market. The place was electric and yet he was lost in the task at hand. A few short months after I snapped this shot the world would experience the Arab Spring. His shirt seemed to be a harbinger of what was to come.
Today, I still wonder what happened to him - what was his destiny?
So back to topic. When I travel, I always try to take the time to enjoy and admire the Castle, the Statue, or the Cathedral, but the shot I am looking for is something that puts the place in that moment I am there. There are too many pros that have captured the famous stuff for me to try to replicate. The young man with the block ice brings vivid memories and experiences of the day for me.
It's true - there's a difference between being a traveler with a camera, or a photographer that's traveling. We all have to find the right balance, according to our wishes, and hopefully not according to the trends. Today it seems that a major motivation for taking photos is to share them, like a particular type of graffiti - such and such was here. That doesn't make it bad.
Sontag is a bit harsh in her critique of photography - but she has a keen sense of perception, and perhaps that's what defines a good critic. Photography isn't the only thing that distances us from experience. The list is almost infinite - from flipping a light switch to taking a plane. The benefits of photography are also numerous : from making life easier and having fun, to creating another form of art. I also don't like the use of generalizations such as "Most tourists feel compelled...", without any type of substantiation.
To Sontag's credit, at the end of her essays she gives a nice anthology of quotes on the subject of photography - quotes that show the complexity of the topic. She also had a deep relationship with Annie Leibovitz - so photography can't be that bad....
I had an interesting revelation when I decided to check how "enslaved" I am to taking photos while traveling. It started out with a discussion I had with my sister, who said to me that I don't take enough photos when I travel. I said that for a long time I stopped taking photos, and that six years ago I got back to photography when I bought my first digital camera. I, too, felt the conflict between the need to document and have visual souvenirs, and on the other hand my feeling that taking photos is somewhat of a chore.
I did the math : our last (24-day) trip to Italy yielded an album of about 1000 photos. Let's say that there were another 200 that I deleted. That's 50 photos a day. On the assumption that I take pics only during 12 hours of a day, that's around 4 photos an hour, or one every fifteen minutes. That was a bit depressing to me - I thought that I was much more of a minimalist than that. Of course in reality, taking pics might be done usually in bursts, rather than evenly spread out during the day(s).
Any of you care to show your math?
Sontag is a bit harsh in her critique of photography - but she has a keen sense of perception, and perhaps that's what defines a good critic. Photography isn't the only thing that distances us from experience. The list is almost infinite - from flipping a light switch to taking a plane. The benefits of photography are also numerous : from making life easier and having fun, to creating another form of art. I also don't like the use of generalizations such as "Most tourists feel compelled...", without any type of substantiation.
To Sontag's credit, at the end of her essays she gives a nice anthology of quotes on the subject of photography - quotes that show the complexity of the topic. She also had a deep relationship with Annie Leibovitz - so photography can't be that bad....
I had an interesting revelation when I decided to check how "enslaved" I am to taking photos while traveling. It started out with a discussion I had with my sister, who said to me that I don't take enough photos when I travel. I said that for a long time I stopped taking photos, and that six years ago I got back to photography when I bought my first digital camera. I, too, felt the conflict between the need to document and have visual souvenirs, and on the other hand my feeling that taking photos is somewhat of a chore.
I did the math : our last (24-day) trip to Italy yielded an album of about 1000 photos. Let's say that there were another 200 that I deleted. That's 50 photos a day. On the assumption that I take pics only during 12 hours of a day, that's around 4 photos an hour, or one every fifteen minutes. That was a bit depressing to me - I thought that I was much more of a minimalist than that. Of course in reality, taking pics might be done usually in bursts, rather than evenly spread out during the day(s).
Any of you care to show your math?
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Bruce Pollock
10+ Posts
Apparently, in later years, Sontag basically acknowledged that most of what she had written in the essays which make up On Photography was nonsense. However, even though her comment about the habits of tourists is a bit harsh, I do think it captures the thought process of many people. Nothing makes me crazy more quickly than seeing someone pose for a selfie in front of a great work of art in a museum.
My math with a digital camera would be about the same. Three weeks in Iceland yielded about 1000 images. However, in past years I was working on a project (the photo above is from that series of trips) where I took a small rangefinder film camera with a fixed 38mm lens. I traveled for three weeks with only five 36 exposure rolls of Tri-X fim. That's about 180 potential images. But my win/loss ratio was significantly higher than on digital because I was more careful to look for specific situations and I added quite a few to my portfolio. You can see the results here:
http://brucepollockphotography.com/portfolio-2/nggallery/galleries/tourist-season
As you say, there are many reasons for making photographs while travelling. I stopped trying to find 'art' every time I released the shutter. I'm just interested in documenting where we went and what we saw - I enjoy reliving the memories later. Occasionally, I do come home with an image worthy of adding to my portfolio - perhaps two out those 1000 shots. But those images find me, not the other way round.
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That pretty much sums it up for me too.
The strange thing is, that in addition to the math I did above, I also tried to answer the question : what's the difference in how I recall a trip, if it was documented (photographically) or not? I found that the difference is not all that significant. In the last fifteen years, we have traveled abroad four times - the first two trips we didn't take photos, the last two we did. When I think about these vacations, my memories are composed of what I remember seeing and experiencing, and are not necessarily composed of recollections of the photos. The photos are viewed mostly in connection with sharing, or sometimes just reminiscing - but this latter function dies off as the photos become more and more familiar. Although - as you say in your interesting blog - sometimes you can find something new in a familiar photo.
I find it ethically problematic to take photos of strangers, so I have very few shots of this type. I wouldn't even have been able to make the statue photo you showed above, much less others in your portfolio. Which is unfortunate for my documenting, because seeing human activity and interacting with people is a significant part of what makes travel fun for us.
Roz
500+ Posts
Yes, I also use my photos more or less as a travel diary. As I've said elsewhere, what we do with ours is to transfer them to a computer connected to our large-screen TV. Since our floor plan is open, the TV screen is visible from our kitchen, living room, and dining area. When we're not using the TV for something else (and we don't watch much TV), we keep the photos continually displaying in a random slide show. It's a good way to keep the memories alive (although I'll admit that often enough we have a hard time identifying where that particular church or landscape was located!).