Philosophy of Street & Travel Photography

Dear _______,

If you don’t want to read more than several sentences, then this introduction will summarize the verbiage below. I have less interest in providing poor quality daily updates and more interest in quality weekly updates. I will post as I see fit during the week but if you want a set schedule—check here every Tuesday for new material. For the reason why, continue reading (and you thought you weren’t going to read more than several sentences…)

Some find it necessary to have a camera on them at all times, and to use it with great frequency to capture everything around them. There is nothing wrong with this of course, and it surely produces a lot of content, much of which can be truly great. For me, I find living the most important aspect, and photography a method to capture that which I live.

I find it much easier to see, to feel and to be, when not looking at every single thing constantly through a camera lens. I want to absorb a place—and if I’m constantly telling the world that I need to take from it, I find it harder to connect with it, and that doesn’t end up so well for me. If I can explore without demands, I feel more sharing and learning can happen.

When photographing wildlife, I find one of the best things to accomplish is to understand the animal you seek. When does that specific bird eat? How does it eat? Where does it go? What does it do when it returns? Is the moose territorial? Does the moose like loud noises? How does the typical moose interact with humans? Does the moose eat for long periods or short periods? When does it sleep?

It is much easier to photograph your subject if you learn about your subject. Even with portraiture, talking with the subject allows for you to understand them and with the mutual partnership, better photographs can be made. When talking about street or travel photography, your subject is your surroundings and consists a lot of your life experience.

When I visit a new place, I want to first feel the place. Sure, without much effort, I find myself automatically building a mental database analyzing lighting, subjects, angles, etc. which comes in handy later, but, before just firing away the shutter, I really like to live a little in the place, understand its working, understand the life. Part of that living translates to a benefit not just to life experience, but to a photography-related benefit: Do people like having their photos taken? What happens in which places and when does it happen? Does the whole place shut down at lunch? Does it get wild at midnight? Are the streets safe? When does food get prepared? Where does it get prepared? What kind of foods are prepared? Does it rain every morning?

Camera or not, we each view the world with a very particular eye. Of course it is quite hard to take a photograph without a camera, but that doesn’t stop me from taking many mental photographs and living the scene. Missing a good photograph, I am fine with this. I accept that not every second needs to be captured, but every second should be lived. The danger is that capturing the moment I lived doesn’t necessarily mean I lived the moment I captured. For me, I find it is a matter of connection and balance.

Life is great. Photography is great. Being on a photographic-mission is great, both as a mission and an experience. The quest is exhilarating. You become a hunter, waiting for the right movements or scenes to come out of hiding before pouncing on them. You’ve hopefully done your research, you know your subject, or you know that a certain type of scene happens with a certain set of inputs. When this going on, my senses become more alert for “that” thing that is just about to happen—where is it coming from, where is it going. And then you watch it develop, or find it just happen, and you either capture it or not—like lightning in a bottle.

With the information I obtained from the time living in the area, I feel richer. And that same information makes hunting that much more productive and interesting. Thus, I haven’t neglected living in the place and I haven’t neglected capturing that wonderful moment in time, this is the balance I seek. I didn’t live for the photograph but I photographed a piece of what I and others lived, and that is what I strive towards.

This is all a very long way of saying that I can’t generate constant updates around the clock without sacrificing quality of photography or quality of life. If they were, then I’d question my use of precious time. I love capturing content, and I like hunting for those scenes and places, but I also love living within the content I capture. Sometimes when you aren’t hunting, and you are just living life, content will appear, and this is often the best. In any case, while I might pop up random posts here or there, be assured that for most of the week, I am out there recording the marvelous places I find myself, and bringing it back here. I plan to share these weekly updates on Tuesdays.

Perhaps this model is a strange idea in a world of immediacy, but I think it of like a cash crop—from Wednesday to Monday is the planting, growing and harvesting; and on Tuesday, the crop rolls into market for consuming. It seems everything now in our developed society is centered around being instant and immediate, and to get that, we cut corners, but some things need to breathe a little I think, including all of us.

This is going to be swell!

Keep rocking,
Tak

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Tak

New York, NY

Internationally-published photographer with a passion for creative food, fine products, unique cultures and underground music. Twitter / Instagram / takw at triphash dot com