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Home is photographic hell?

Sounds like you need to change your attitude about where you are.Pretend your a tourist.What else does that area have to offer from a cultural standpoint? What shows,events,festivities are availabe in that area or within reasonable distance? Their should be tourist publications or events listed in the newspaper.If this don't work,well,you have the rest of Europe.Welcome to APUG.Pony!
 

Sounds to me like you have a bit too much wealth and luxury for your own good. You get to travel all over the world and make tourist pictures and so you go home and get bored. Maybe you are bored with yourself and your life. I am making a series of photographs called "My life looks like this". It is photos in my own house of the peculiar natural still life and inner landscape stuff that happens while living. It is interesting to be alive. I don't have to run all over the world and look at other people living to avoid being bored. Ocassionally I do make a trip. But I do it with a certain amount of reverance and appreceation of people living their lives and mostly unable to afford the privilage of travel.
Dennis
 
Sometimes it's a matter of being visually bored with the region you live in. Sometimes it's that the visual attributes of where you live just don't suit your style or chosen subject matter. I like wide open minimal spaces yet I live in an area of extremely high population density. My solution is to travel. I also enjoy travel and really enjoy seeing places with inspiring geography.

The point is that shoot whatever you like, where ever you like. There are no rules that say it's wrong to travel to shoot, it's less convenient but you gotta shoot what you feel compelled to shoot, not what just happens to be readily available.
 
dpurdy said:
Sounds to me like you have a bit too much wealth and luxury for your own good.
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Nope, My first half of my traveling career was done with a rifle and backpack, my second half with an almost empty pocket and backpack.

Traveling is how I get to know my world. It has always been my biggest priority and there has been little luxury attached to it.

Given the choice between seeing my neighbor polishing his BMW or watching rice paddy workers, between watching the check out girl at the local supermarket or rug sellers in Istanbul... I will always take the latter.

I think there is a difference of cultures here. Living in Europe a trip to Egypt or Nigeria or India .... is just as easy as a Canadian flying to Florida or a New Yorker flying to LA. Geographically it is no big deal. Add 6 weeks vacation a year to the pot and work for an airline.... Skipping watching the BMW polisher all summer has become a no brainer.

best
Chris
 
Ole said:
It took me a real effort to realise that the area around my home town is "exotic" to 99.995% of the world's population.
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When I lived in Johannesburg as a kid and went to Cape Town on vacation I went to the beach every day.

When I lived in Cape Town... I seldom went at all.
 
You must be joking. We flew many times to Germany and Austria mainly to take pictures. May be you have been stuck in an industrial town for 10 years. Go check your eyes!
 
I've said many times that I believe the measure af a true photographer is the ability to make great photographs in your own "backyard". I certainly mean no disrespect to those that feel the need to travel as I too love to hit the road in search of inspiration, but if you can't find it where you live - wherever you live, you simply aren't trying hard enough. It is who you are... Get out there!

 

I do quite agree with you. Photography is just as happy at home or away. There is no boundary. But the search outwards is an on-going affair as well.
 
jnanian said:
most of what i have photographed the last 20 + years has been
down the road from where i live 5, 10, 20mins away.
sometimes its just seeing what might be right in front
of you and realizing it is there ...
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Me too. I live on an island 26 miles wide. I don't get off very often and when I do it's not normally to take photographs.

There are still plenty of places on this little island I haven't been to yet.


Steve.
 
Windscale said:
You must be joking. We flew many times to Germany and Austria mainly to take pictures. May be you have been stuck in an industrial town for 10 years. Go check your eyes!
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I would suggest a bit of politeness? We are not discussing Obama-Mccain here.

I think boredom with ones surroundings is a natural state. if you are used to traveling, being stuck in one place is indeed somewhat sobering.
 
I too have had this trouble :rolleyes:

The Landscapes I like to photograph are about 4hrs drive from where I live

However, I have learned to adjust my "eye" to photograph locally

So I cannot photograph the stuff I normally like to photograph when at home - so I must photograph other things.

So I look not to - in my case waterfalls and rugged rocky outcrops (there are none here)- but for small things - the details we look at every day but because they are such everyday things we rarely "see" them

Its about changing your vision and perspective.

Walk about in your garden and really look for things - small & detailed things.

Walk or drive to your nearest park / forest / heath land and take your time to really look about you.

Drive to the next town and look at that - both the new stuff and the oldest buildings you can find

I think its like writers block - so don't take the camera with you but just walk around and look properly - it can be amazing what you notice when you look properly.

A whole new world opens up to you

But it is hard and will take time to adapt to the new way of seeing

Good luck

Martin
 
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All the best pics I have taken throughout my life have been taken close to wherever I have been living. But I do agree that when you live somewhere for a while you stop seeing the "pretty" things. And I have lived in some pretty places!
 
I bumped into this book Home Photography: Inspiration on Your Doorstep by Andrew Sanderson in browsing through the bookstore and it very much changed my attitude.
He had a change in life circumstances that left him at home a great deal of time and so he determined to photograph only what was at home--I have found it an interesting exercise to repeat to try and hone my appreciation of there being photos everywhere.
 
Seabee said:
I would suggest a bit of politeness? We are not discussing Obama-Mccain here.

I think boredom with ones surroundings is a natural state. if you are used to traveling, being stuck in one place is indeed somewhat sobering.
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But my friend, the Germany I know is quite a big place, not exactly a 10m x 10m matchbox! Of course, some people do see the world as consisting of the little patch around them. Gos helps them in that case.
 

Of course, your live in one of the most beautiful places in this world.
 
Windscale said:
You must be joking. We flew many times to Germany and Austria mainly to take pictures. May be you have been stuck in an industrial town for 10 years. Go check your eyes!
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Actually, when I visit my brother in Bochum (industrial as can be), I really like taking photos of that. The remains of heavy industry, the last rows tiny houses that cover the outskirts like rabbit stables, each a different colour, the allotment plots, and of course the modern architecture that is slowly eating its way into all the derelict, dirt-poor remains of Bochums coal-and-steel past.

Although - I really enjoy living where I do now, being able to get into a lovely and diverse forest by literally just walking out the door, and being a two hour drive from the Bavarian Forest National Park (and the even more stunning Czech side of it) and three hours from the Alps.

Antje
 
I hate home too Seabee, it's filthy and full of strangers.
 
Windscale said:
But my friend, the Germany I know is quite a big place, not exactly a 10m x 10m matchbox! Of course, some people do see the world as consisting of the little patch around them. Gos helps them in that case.
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Gos has never helped me :-(

I sacrificed 2 goats and a chicken on a full moon thursday last month, doing the whole anti clockwise cartwheel and singing stairway to heaven backwards.... and still my mother in law lives....

but that is a complete other subject...

You assume I do not travel in Germany... I do, a lot, but general trends are to be found all over, the way the towns look, the way the people dress....

You say you have flown here many times to specifically to take photos, then turn around and complain because I say I love to fly to OTHER places to take photos.... There is a slight break in the chain of objective logic here.....
 

Actually, I think maybe in an industrial town i too would have more fun with the camera.

Sad irony is... with traffic jammed highways and obscenely high Deutsche Bahn prices it is quicker and often cheaper for me to jump in an airplane to somewhere else than it is to drive or take the train.

From Aschaffenburg to Bochum with a train costs as much as a cheap flight from Frankfurt to Porto.

To Drive from Frankfurt to München took me 7 hours a few months ago and the same back due to the Würzburg bottleneck and many construction sights... I could have been in Cairo in half the time.
 
keithwms said:
Chris, go to New Mexico; David, go to Germany.

Problem solved.
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Exchanging/swapping homes/apartments for a couple of weeks would not be a bad idea. LF shooters could also swap film holders and tripod. Less stuff to cart around and lots of money saved on accommodations.
 
What else do you feel?

Boring - okay, but what else do you feel at your home? What specifically bores you about the place?

Anything you actually like about the place?

How exactly does it differ from the other places you have lived at (not just visited)?

I have a degree in geography, and those would be some of the questions a modern geographer would ask regarding "sense of place". If you can figure out answers to questions like that, maybe you can get out of that "same old - same old" visual rut about Germany.

I also know what boring is. I live in Dallas, Texas and most days we have bright sunny days with blue sky with no clouds. Boring, especially if you like to take architectural photos. I'm trying to work with it.

Boring digital photos attached: one from my office cubicle from yesterday, one from my apartment window today.
 

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Ohhhh, an APUG house swap!! What a great idea! I've got a son in Germany (Luneburg but looking for work closer to Koln where his fiance lives) and a mother-in-law in Norfolk that I'd love to see. Who wants to come to Vancouver Island? If you're longing for trees, rocks, ocean, mountains, rivers or wildlife theres photos waiting for you here. Cities, towns, farms, people, and lots of other possibilities, of course. You won't find 500 year old buildings, but people get bored of those, right?
 

Aschaffenburg! You're kidding, right? We drive to the Spessart from Erlangen sometimes, and it's just wonderful. The forest, the many species that live there, there's an area of pristine wild daffodils. And then the orchards, the vineyards a little further towards Würzburg, Aschaffenburg itself offers nice architecture, and if you're bored of city life, go to Frankfurt. Problem solved.

Antje
 
Renato Tonelli said:
Exchanging/swapping homes/apartments for a couple of weeks would not be a bad idea. LF shooters could also swap film holders and tripod. Less stuff to cart around and lots of money saved on accommodations.
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Well why don't we kick it up one more notch and throw in spouses / partners too.
 
I hate where I live, photographically it is very boring. I don't even take photographs anymore.. everything is so bland. I feel your pain.
 
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