Sometimes I feel it too.
Ever since photography became my greatest passion, I’ve had this recurring urge to visit new places in search of photographic inspiration.
For a long time, I thought better photographs lived somewhere else. Somewhere further, where I hadn’t been yet.
The urge to travel vs. Everyday photography
From time to time, I compulsively check the profiles and websites of photographers from the other side of the world. I spend hours “traveling” through Google Maps with my nose pressed to the screen, searching for inspiration, imagining my own photos from all those more or less exotic – but certainly endlessly fascinating – places.
Most often, though, it ends the same way: I sit comfortably on the couch, check the weather forecast for tomorrow, and if it looks promising, I throw my camera into my bag. The next morning, instead of heading to the office, I go in the opposite direction.
And it’s not the airport.
Twenty minutes later, I’m in my favorite place on earth, in the rising March sun.
Even with limited time, thanks to my familiarity with an area, I can plan a photo walk in a way that lets me catch the best light and still make it to work before things catch fire there.
I arrive at the office around 10:00 a.m. and start my working day with a smile on my face.
There are many benefits of practicing local photography, but from a personal development perspective, one aspect is especially important to me.
Why local photography is a form of personal development
“To be happy at home, said Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him.”
— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Practicing photography in the place where you live is for me simply a way of an everyday reminder of what actually matters.
My surroundings are far from exotic. An ordinary parking lot, dunes, a path down to the beach, a few beach huts slowly coming back to life after their winter hibernation. Nothing special. Totally mundane things.
I know them inside out.
Yet they still can become exotic when I remind myself how I reacted the first time I saw them. I was stoked.
I consciously rekindle that child-like level of curiosity and ideas for pictures near home become endless.
Searching for elements that match my sense of aesthetics – exploring the backs of beach huts that everyone only knows from their front facades, sea containers that in a few weeks will turn into a surfers’ villages, peeking into the windows of beach cafés in a slightly shameless way – brings me immense pleasure in rediscovering the world I (in theory) know so well.
I used to travel find new places and photograph familiar motifs.
Now, more and more often, I return to and shoot the same places to search for new motifs within them.
The camera is an excuse to look at a well-known reality from a completely different perspective – to remind myself that, with a bit of curiosity, truly anything can be aesthetic.
Everything can become new and exotic.
Everything can be photographable.
Travel is inspiring – but it’s not a system to learn photography
Think about it – even if you live in the provinces, like I do, someone from the other side of the world would gladly spend a good amount of money to see how and where you live. Just saying.
Don’t get me wrong – traveling itself is fantastic. It opens your eyes, broadens your horizons, is a wonderful way to spend time, and one of the best ways to spend money. Going on photo trips is a great way to grow as a photographer, but I don’t see it as the foundation of my practice anymore.
Because unless you’re a professional traveler, it only happens occasionally, and it’s hard to talk about consistent photographic practice if it’s limited solely to trips.
Photographing without the need to travel opens up the whole world of possibilities to grow.
The playground in your backyard is the place where you experience and learn the most. It’s at your fingertips, and you can go back to it whenever you want, in any lighting and weather conditions, and devote much more time to exploration.
Practicing photography locally has become, year after year, an increasingly powerful source of reclaiming joy and gratitude for my theoretically boring and ordinary neigborhood.
I’ll say it again: your local surroundings will matter when you give them the meaning.
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