The club has just announced our fifth Utah Travels exhibit at the West Valley Arts Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley. Every other year this exhibit features approximately 70 of the best travel images submitted by our members. I’m confident that this year will be no different! So, in thinking about a blog post for our upcoming newsletter, it seemed appropriate to write about travel photography. In particular: what questions might one ask oneself while reviewing your work before image submission?
The in-the-field, on-location workflow for landscape photography for me is substantially different than for travel or cultural photography. So, too is my internal evaluation of images. For landscapes, whether photographed on the other side of the world or much closer to home, extreme depths of field, sharp focus, foreground interests, dramatic skies, wide sweeps of vistas, etc., are often the compositional elements I work with resulting in hopefully grand, visually impactful images that have no “story” beyond the powerful yet fragile beauty of our world. But cultural images – those travel photographs gathered across the planet that have people or some element of humanity in them – require, in my mind, something more. The six questions – admittedly subjective, and probably not exhaustive – I look to answer are:
- Does the image have a clear narrative?
- Does the image have impact?
- Does the image seem unique?
- Does the image feel authentic?
- Does the image convey a sense of being in a distant location and/or culture?
- Is the image empathetic?
Narrative
Unlike many/most landscape images that usually aspire to nothing more than expressions of awe or beauty or both, cultural photographs work the strongest if a message, statement, or story – a narrative – can be derived from them. This “story” may not in fact be the message and meaning that the photographer intended, but that matters less than the connection made. As humans, we respond strongly to images of other humans, though less so to images featuring only human artifacts (buildings, villages, modes of transportation, implements of work, etc.). The trappings of cultures resonate with us. Looking at travel images, like the ones included in this post, you will not know the human details beneath them. The lives, the feelings, the hardships and joys, the mundaneness and epiphanies that take place in these peoples’ worlds. But you will know that they are there, part of the same human condition that you live in and through. Ansel Adams once stated that there are at least two people in every photograph: the photographer and the photograph viewer. As the photographer you likely will not know what is going on behind someone’s eyes, but at the least you can convey a very small sense and slice of their life to others viewing your images.
Impact
The impact of an image on a viewer is perhaps one of the most subjective of “measurements.” Like music, cinema, paintings, poetry, and other artforms, whether something moves you is as much dependent upon you as it is upon the actual thing. As someone once quipped: one person’s opera is another person’s heavy metal (though, granted, many dislike both genres of music!). Nonetheless, one way to maximize the compelling nature of your photograph is to ensure that the composition is strong, the focus (literally and figuratively) is on what you want, that the colors or monochromatic contrast support the subject, that all the elements work together in delivering your image as a cohesive, moving statement. More difficult, try to separate your emotions for the image –after all, you were there experiencing it – from the more objective strengths or weaknesses of the photograph.
Uniqueness
If you are on a photography tour, you may find that many of your images look much the same as your colleagues on that tour. That is natural and not really anything to be concerned about though one should also strive to try to find a different angle or composition for a given subject. In fact, always look for and photograph from many different angles and perspectives. One of those will certainly work for you. At a larger scale, turning to an example from the world of landscape photography, do we really need to see more images of sunrise at Mesa Arch or sunset at Delicate Arch? I know: a rhetorical question. And if it’s your first time visiting those iconic landscapes you should definitely photograph them classically, so to speak. But again, look for unique and different perspectives. Especially if you are showing your work to the world at large: always strive to try to create and display the same, differently.
Authentic
Cultural travel photography is not documentary photography or photojournalism, but it does have elements of both. Arguably all photography is manipulation and subjective, but it the case of cultural photography we want the images to ring true. The travel images should feel authentic, even if they have been manipulated. By asking a local to put on tradition dress for a photograph, when they typically only where it for special occasions, or a cameleer to race down a sandy slope at sunrise, when normally he would be brewing his morning tea, are two examples of arranging how we might want a photograph to appear. But they should still look plausible. Note that this is somewhat controversial in the world of travel photography as there is a school of thought that any setting so manipulated, any photograph beyond pure disconnected-from-your-subjects street photography is inauthentic. I do some of that type of candid travel photography – usually with a telephoto lens – but I also love, for example, walking through markets engaging with people to photograph them as environmental portraits. I also photograph in more arranged settings, but again, the images must have that element of truth in them. As always, your mileage may vary!
Far, Far Away
One of my favorite attributes of a well-crafted travel image is the ability to transport me to different lands and even different times, far, far and away. That’s not to say that an image of kids jumping off a diving board at a motel in Kingman Arizona can’t be a great travel photograph! It can (see above), but I personally am always looking for new places to explore and Kingman ain’t it (no offense to any Kingmanites out there). I am curious about that delicious strangeness that exists in so many corners of the world. Great travel images – along with wonderfully written travel narratives – and can ignite that sense of wanting to go there. Alternatively, you may see an image that is so powerful, perhaps so grim, that you are transported against your will. You don’t want to go there, but still, you can almost smell and hear and feel being there. Many of Sebastião Salgado’s photographs evoke that.
Empathy
Simply put, be empathetic to your travel subjects, not exploitive. We have the luxury and pleasure to travel to lands as far away as we wish. Many people I photograph do not. Most would live comfortably for a year or two or three off the proceeds of selling my camera gear. I understand and remind myself of that on every trip I take to Asia or Africa or Latin America. I am not a photojournalist or social documentary photographer (like Sebastião Salgado was) but am conscious that I am an informal ambassador from my country and culture and as such must be respectful and mindful that their values and ways of living are no less important than ours. It is also fair to say that many Western systems and values have been placed (or, forced) upon other cultures, and not always to their benefit. There is sense of shared responsibility that should not be neglected.
Admittedly, as stated earlier, much in photography is subjective. But hopefully some elements of this essay will “speak to you.” Regardless, I look forward to seeing all those wonderful Utah Travels images this summer.
Words & Images Jeff Clay