Re: Leicaphilia

[Harrison McClary <hmphoto@delphi.com>]

>A number of years ago, I got to wondering why it was that I could be such
>an enthusiastic photographer while travelling, yet my gear could remain
>idle for months at a time when home. The answer, as I discovered was this:
>As I travelled, everything I saw was new, a source of wonder and well worth
>chasing after. Why not, I reasoned, learn to view even the most mundane
>scenes in a similar light? It made sense to me that if I learned to see
>fantastic jungles in a nearby vacant lot, or abstract sculpture in the fire
>hose connections of office buildings, I might be that much more attuned to
>recognizing, and exploiting, a great photo opportunity.
>
>One of my first memorable shots of mundane objects happened mostly by
>accident: I had been downtown early one Sunday morning, in the vicinity of
>a new office building. I was fascinated by how the rising sun played across
>the the manicured lawn. Not having any real composition in mind, I simply
>pointed the camera downwards at the grass and fired away. The results were
>amazing: The image all but glows with a warm, green and gold light, and the
>low angle of the sun was such that one can almost feel the texture of the
>grass. I took a number of rather good-but-ordinary cityscapes that morning,
>none as powerful as that shot of grass! In such a state of mind, photo
>opportunities abound in everyday life, hence the desireability of carrying
>a camera just about everywhere.

This is a great example of what I always tell people when they ask me how
to take good photos.  I usually respond "Open your eyes."  Light does
wonderful things esp if you are looking for photos near sunset and sunrise.
The color, shadows, and time combine to create an atmosphere that
photographers have been calling "Magic hour" forever.  Unfortunately most
people walk through their world never seeing the beauty and wonder that is
at their own back door.  They only think things in remote places are
fabulous.  But remember that when you go to say Nepal, while it is new and
exciting for you it is home to Ian Stanley, as well as millions of other
people, and many of them look at their world just as you look at your home
town.  If you can rise above the daily worries of getting to work on time,
ect. and look around your own hometown with a little naivete you will see
thousands of subjects worth photographing.  One great example of this is a
spread I saw in National Geographic about a year or 2 ago.  One of the NGS
contractors shot photos of the squirrels in her own back yard and got some
fabulous shots which made an entertaining spread in the magazine.  Normally
when we think of being on assignment for a publication such as National
Geographic we think of exotic places, not our own backyard.

I have a good friend who has traveled all over the world as the chief
photographer for "The Commission" magazine, the publication of the Baptist
World Missions.  He also is a fellow Black Star photographer and he and I
were talking about this exact thing and he commented that after a few years
of constant travel it gets to be as routine as working in one town does.
The key to getting good photos is not being in a unique place, but being
able to "see beyond" the ordinary.  I had this conversation with Don very
early in my career as a photojournalist and it has made a lasting
impression on me.  Now that I travel constantly also, I know exactly what
he was talking about.

Harrison McClary
hmphoto@delphi.com
http://people.delphi.com/hmphoto