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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Solo Photo Trip to the Southwest, tips needed! | |
Greg Campbell wrote:
Yea. Books like that have a strong Follow the Recipe feel that I find unhelpful. The photos you're likely to take are exactly the same ones you've already seen on-line or at the local Camera Club. For reasons I cannot comprehend, some people really dig that "Me Too!" Trophy mentality. As such, they are good if the shooter is looking to 'hit' the most places in the shortest time. That's fine with me, so long as the rapacious mobs leave immediately after bagging their prize and don't intrude on me and the cute location 1/4 mile away that I found earlier in the day.
OTOH, after looking at the free preview chapter of the St. George area, I now know of a few more neat locations to add to my Impossibly Long List....Show more →
Speaking as the author of a guidebook to a different place... in some ways I have to agree with you, though with qualifications. (I have not read any photographic guides to the southwest, so nothing I write here should be taken as a commentary on them.)
Like you, I'm not a big fan of the places the mobs go — though I may stop in those places once if I have never seen them before or if it is quiet and extra special conditions arise. In some ways, though, I'd rather not be told about them in advance. (I visited Canyonlands a few years ago, blissfully unaware of one particular icon that "everyone" shoots until I saw a sign for it. I drove past and went elsewhere.)
When I photograph in, well just about any place I photograph, I do not follow guidebooks. I follow hunches. I explore. I wonder "what if?" I return to places to see them in a different light. I gradually internalize the rhythms of the place and how its light works, and I come to know the things that make it what it is: the geology, the light, the weather, the wildlife, the plants. It is a process by which I come to know the places gradually, often over years and during many visits. For me, that process — as slow as it may be — is much more interesting and fulfilling than checking another spot off the list.
That leads me to think about some possible variables among guide books and guide book authors. Unless you really have no choice — and you are still at the point where you are attracted to such things — you might want to avoid a book with a title like (to invent one) "Top 15 Secret Icons You Must Capture!" On the other hand, some of the best guidebooks embody the accumulated knowledge, experience, and perspectives of a people who have thoroughly explored these places, and that — locations aside — can be something well worth engaging.
YMMV,
Dan
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