Viewing the World as a Photographer

Approximately half of my luggage consists of my camera, the lenses and my tripod. Trying to save as much weight as possible, carefully choosing how much clothes I should carry along on the one hand and using a big, heavy camera on the other hand seems to be a contradiction at first. But for me photography is an integral part for voyages like this one.

To explain it a bit, I would like to tell you about a short discussion I had with Andy in Beijing when we were talking about photography. He wondered whether in a few years it would be possible to have a camera which takes photos, which could reproduce perfectly the view you have at that moment. You are certainly familiar with the problem, that e.g. you tried to capture your friends with the sunset in the background and on the final photo either all the faces are completely black or the beautiful orange-red skye just turned into a bright white.

We both agreed that probably there will be a lot of advances, especially regarding the software processing the photos in your camera, but I doubted, that regarding just capturing your impressions there will be so many changes. While certain standards scenarios - like the sunset example above - will be probably not that big of a challenge, capturing a moment “as it is” is a totally different story.

Most people are not really aware of how much processing of the visual input of our eyes is done in our brain. While sometimes yoy can’t create the photo you wanted due to more or less technical limitations - e.g. again in the sunset example: the dynamic range (differences in brightness) is too big for the final format and therefore we have to e.g. tell the software how it should be reduced - often it is actually more a problem that the picture you have in mind is already heavily postprocessed. The photo should be totally sharp, for near objects and also the ones far away? Just an impression created by your mind by focusing really fast when your eyes move and blending the images together. You can’t take a good photo of this nice, historic building, since as son as you lift the camera the traffic lights and trees always make it difficult to find the right angle? Well, they have been previously filtered by your brain. Somehow you can’t capture a scene, since either you focus too much on a certain person (not enough background to recreate the atmosphere) or the person is just one among many and the viewer is left wondering why the hell you created this photo? You may subconsciously may have weighted several differences within your view.

So having a camera which just reproduces the details of a moment will not create what you just saw and for me an often important part in good photos is that they manage to represent the atmosphere and not the real objects. Therefore the composition of a photo, selecting the aperture and the focus, the exposure and even postprocessing - like (de)saturating, changing the contrast etc. - can become important manipulation tools to show what you have been seeing (and Andy was very well aware of that).

When I travel with my camera, I often switch to a separate “mode” in which I start to focus much more on the elements being important for creating a certain atmosphere. That does not mean that I just focus on some details, but that I start to get more aware of what creates an impression on me and why. So instead of just a temporary, elusive moment I create more permanent associations. Finally taking the photo is then just a simple, technical task, which is done almost automatically if I have the tools which suite me (That’s also a reason why I almost never use my smartphone for photography, although the quality of the photos is often quite good. But the way I have to handle it just disturbs the process of capturing the moment for me).

Of course, photography is not the only way how you can get into such an immersive travelling mode. Some people don’t need anything at all, for others drawing or writing a diary are the right methods to create a lasting impression. But for me, my camera is the right tool and it’s worth carrying the extra luggage anytime!