Photographing your local patch.
I was talking to a good friend the other day who also happens to be a photographer, about how you can run out of photographic subjects close to home. I’ve been photographing Essex for over 30 years now and I was basically saying that if I wanted to create good landscape photography I always needed to travel a bit. I was complaining really, I suppose.
Anyway the very next day the sun was shining and it was one of those perfect late autumn days so I thought I’d take a walk around one of my local woodlands. Now, I love photography and always have, so even though this was just a walk I took a camera and one lens.
I wasn’t expecting much photographically but after walking for a few minutes I came to an area I know very well and surprise surprise it looked great in the autumnal sunshine. I spent the next hour having a great time taking a series of photographs that were different from anything I’d taken before in this woodland.
So next time I complain about my local area I’m going to take my own advice and look at familiar locations and subjects as if I were visiting for the first time. In many ways this will be true because different light, weather conditions, time of day and time of year may well mean we are seeing the same location as if it’s for the first time.
