Travel photography and documentation

I photograph a lot of different things when I visit new places; anything from the local people, historical sites, buildings and well…pretty much anything you can think of! I often reflect on why I have chosen to photograph a particular thing, was it because it was pretty or said something special about the place? Was it because I wanted to ‘document’? I suppose any photograph is documentation of some sort, just look at the millions of seemingly ordinary people and things that can now be seen on Instagram, for example. When I visit places with ‘social issues’ such as poverty, I try and take extra care in how I document people’s everyday life, and to be respectful when approaching them. How they, in our photographs, end up representing a country or a place is also important to consider. In any place many different fractions of a culture exists, not just the ones that happen to be snapped with the camera in the hands of a tourist.

So how do we do it? What ‘should’ we photograph? Well, a good place to start is to take pictures of things we like the look of, and ask yourself why you like it? I try to give a varied picture of the culture that is represented in a location, but what is culture? Well, that is probably for another blog post, but it could be anything really! Local food, style of buildings, fauna and flora…

What I enjoy the most is to find things that have not been photographed so much, to give a new perspective so to speak! And there is nothing better than when I come home from a trip, look at my photographs and realize that I managed to document a feeling! Next time you go on holiday, don´t just photograph family and friends in front of a site you visited (but do take these photographs as well!), try and capture how you felt when you were there!