travel photography
In these days where “wanderlust” has been replaced by “travel advice”, “travel restrictions”, “traffic light countries” and all those negative connotations, sometimes it’s worth stoping and thinking about the bigger picture. In fact, it may be worth thinking a little bigger than we used to - going outside the usual parameters, looking at places we have always discarded.
Read MoreIt takes a village…
…and an insane amount of trial, error, horrible failures to succeed and once you do, you have to do it all over again (preferably without the errors and the failures, but I’m almost certain they will happen!) However, these days, more than any time in history, amazing images don’t just happen - they are crafter, carefully and with the collaboration and support of a lot of people who sometimes don’t get enough of the credit. I wanted to do just that!
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Three generations of Hamer warriors, Omo Valley (1200ws at full power, 120cm octabox, camera right)
2020 has certainly been an insanely challenging year for all of us - for photographers a time for introspection, of rethinking a million billion things, of looking back and forward, of finding new creative avenues and pathways. Stuck inside our homes, cut off from our clients, our models and our muses, unable to collaborate with all those people who give life to our ideas we were forced to look back to our past work and, in more ways than one, reevaluate it. At least, that was what I did and it led me to, well, think differently.
Read MoreEven the best laid plans…(or why I completely failed during my last trip!)
…and yes, I am fully aware of what I’m saying: my last photographic foray was a failure. Maybe not complete in the absolute sense of the word, but certainly miles away from what I had plan, what I had envisaged and what I wanted to achieve. Even to this day, more than a month later, it fills me with anger and bitterness that I don’t know how to overcome. But maybe its better if I explain.
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Images have been processed since the dawn of photography - even the most die-hard street photographer or film aficionado, more often than not, make creative choices about how to interpret the images they captured. This can be as simple as pushing or pulling the film sensitivity or cropping, others may extend to dodging and burning and more. These techniques - which are by no means simple - have resulted in the amazing pictures the previous analogue generations have bequeathed us. Jump to today and what do we find?
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Let me start by explaining exactly why I chose to write this “Photographer’s guide to the Mt Hagen Show” - especially since this is not something I usually do. Believe it or not, I did not put this together because I know better or I’m a better photographer, but because after searching for months for any article, blog post - anything really - which describes what happens during the show, what visitors should expect and so on, I came up with absolutely nothing. All I found were a few vague descriptions, some shaky videos but nothing to give a photographer enough to adequately prepare for what happens.
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The early morning train coming through Train Street (this is the 6am train, going from Hanoi to Danang)
Researching what is worth seeing in Hanoi one cannot but stumble upon a mention of the famous Train Street. You get to read about the train which passes “inches from the houses” (it doesn’t), about the locals who live “right on the tracks and only move moments before the train arrives” (they don’t) and about how “crazy it all is” (it isn’t) and you start dreaming about it and wanting to see it and so on and so forth. I mean, let’s face it - it sounds absolutely tantalising and amazing - the antithesis between the fragile human with the massive metal beast that is the modern locomotive, especially in this day and age of political correctness and safety-above-all. So, if you’re in Vietnam for something more than cheap booze and party, Train Street is a must see, right?
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In this day and age of information, where thousands of images, articles, opinions of all types and quality literally bombard us every waking moment, we become, more and more, exposed to both ends of the quality spectrum - from the amazing and awe-inspiring to the truly, beyond-words, awful. True, that has always been the case, but in the old days (and yes, this does show how old I am!) awfulness had the tendency to be filtered early, discouraged and, eventually, stamped out.
Today, where every single person can build a site or a blog, post anything they way and share it with the world (and, through that, find people who will like it and agree with it), more and more failed experiments reach us and, for me at least, make me wonder: why? Why would someone allow themselves to share something bad when there is such a plethora of incredible resources (for free for God’s sake!) to help them. Of course, the answer is obvious: today people crave attention, affection and validation of their view of the world that they don’t read, they rarely learn and, worse than all, they don’t accept opinions or criticism.
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