Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/02/22

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Subject: Re: [Leica] In Our Own Backyard?
From: Nathan Wajsman <wajsman@webshuttle.ch>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 09:08:11 +0100
References: <20020220053146.53398.qmail@web20504.mail.yahoo.com> <010501c1b9d5$d760c320$633f4d18@gv.shawcable.net>

Ted,

I am obviously not going to argue with your experience, but my own experience
has been different. When I am in an exotic (for me) location, then I have a hard
time seeing past the exoticism and end up taking quite ordinary pictures of
interesting things. When I am in Rome, for instance, I end up taking lots of
tourist snapshots--maybe good ones, certainly better than what the average
tourist gets, but snapshots nonetheless. On the other hand, when I wander around
Zurich with my Leica (and Brussels before that), then I am much more focused on
finding pictorially interesting elements in these familiar surroundings. I feel
the same away about other places that I visit frequently, like Copenhagen or
London.

There is also the practical advantage of being able to go back and shoot again
if not satisfied with the initial effort. I am having this experience right now
with a place in Zurich where there are two large chessboards on the ground and
people come to play using 80 cm tall chess pieces. I have been there a couple of
times with my Leica but have not yet made a picture worthy to be a PAW image, so
I just keep going back.

So I think there an argument for saying that for many of us, the strongest
images are made close to home. Of course it helps if "home" is a reasonably
large city with a lot of different things going on, but it is not strictly
necessary.

Nathan

Ted Grant wrote:

> Bill Clough wrote:
> >>>    Still--cannot it be argued that when photographers are
> > in a place that is new and strong and strange, they are
> > more alert--and therefore see photographs they might
> > otherwise miss in more familiar settings?<<<
>
> Hi Bill,
> Without question! And I speak from more than a few overseas assignments and
> on this North American continent travelling it east to west, north to south.
>
> On foreign assignments one is far more alert and aware of new locals and
> things than walking about their home town. Sure we should be just as alert
> to the home brew as the foreign, but it just doesn't work that way.

- --
Nathan Wajsman
Herrliberg (ZH), Switzerland

e-mail: wajsman@webshuttle.ch

Photo-A-Week: http://www.wajsman.com/indexpaw2002.htm
General photo site: http://www.wajsman.com/index.htm




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