Home may be where the heart is, but it's also where the heartbreak is. Which is why sometime it can be hard to photograph the places you know so well. All those memories--however good or bad or something in-between--can get in the way of actually seeing things right in front of you.
But head off to a place far away that you've never been to before, and there are no memories--just pure, 100% new (as long as you haven't spent too much time looking at other people's images of the place). It's a visual ecstasy unlike any other. A place so vacant of recognizable things, your brain will thirst for things to see and remember just to orient itself. You barely even have to try.
However...learning to put the past aside at home, while more work and less euphoric, has its benefits, too. You can dig deeper, beyond the surface to things that take awhile to see. You're better able to come up with new, interesting and original ways of seeing those things. The colorful clothes and turbans and saris are ultimately as superficial as a business suit; it's what's underneath that really and always matters.
So yes, you don't need to travel 10,000 away to take good, interesting and meaningful pictures. But you might need to do so every now and then in order to realize that.
But head off to a place far away that you've never been to before, and there are no memories--just pure, 100% new (as long as you haven't spent too much time looking at other people's images of the place). It's a visual ecstasy unlike any other. A place so vacant of recognizable things, your brain will thirst for things to see and remember just to orient itself. You barely even have to try.
However...learning to put the past aside at home, while more work and less euphoric, has its benefits, too. You can dig deeper, beyond the surface to things that take awhile to see. You're better able to come up with new, interesting and original ways of seeing those things. The colorful clothes and turbans and saris are ultimately as superficial as a business suit; it's what's underneath that really and always matters.
So yes, you don't need to travel 10,000 away to take good, interesting and meaningful pictures. But you might need to do so every now and then in order to realize that.
