11-NOV-2009
Overlook, Monument Valley, Arizona, 2009
Ever since John Ford’s epic Western movies made Monument Valley an iconic setting over 70 years ago, travel photographers have been shooting this vista from a bluff overlooking the scene, earning it a place on the list of the Greatest American Travel Clichés. There are several ways to leave the cliché behind and make an expressive interpretation of such a scene. Catching the glow of a setting sun on these buttes offers a way to blunt one cliché with another. But what if it is overcast, and there is no visible sunset? Leaving the overlook and going down into the valley might provide another fresh approach. But if logistics limit us to this particular overlook, what other options might be available? For me, the answer often comes through layering and juxtaposition. I walked up and down the overlook, which is quite expansive, looking for a strong foreground element I could compare to the buttes in the distance. I found it in a pair of massive red boulders, streaked with marks of time itself. Monument Valley is a geological textbook, created millions of years ago when the ocean floor cracked, land emerged from sea, and eventually became sandstone. The twin boulders anchor my image, speaking of geologic upheaval, and pointing to the buttes that rise in the distance. Using a 22mm wideangle focal length, I unite the boulders with the vista. My goal is not to make a pretty postcard cliché, but to tell an epic story of geological process. (As for that large bird that flies across the frame at the moment of exposure, I attribute that to pure chance.)
Upon my return from Monument Valley, I saw an item in the New Yorker Magazine about the new book “Ansel Adams in Color” which featured a previously unpublished shot Adams made using the left hand rock to anchor his color view of this scene in 1950. Adams waited for much better light on this rock than I found, and he moved in on it to powerfully merge it with the butte on the left. See:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2009/10/ansel-adams-in-color.html
13-NOV-2008
Camel’s call, Douze, Tunisia, 2008
A desert camel standing before a setting sun is one of the oldest travel clichés – dating back to the National Geographic magazines of the 1930s. What separates this image from a cliché is the turned head and open mouth. The camel seems animated, crying out for family or food. The sunset adds a poignant context -- the long night beckons, and this camel is letting us know of its needs.
26-MAR-2008
First light, Taj Mahal, Agra, India, 2008
Mughal Emperor Sha Jahan built the Taj Mahal in 1648 as a tomb for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who had died in childbirth. There must have been more than 500 people photographing the Taj Mahal at dawn along with me, yet I was probably the only one who focused on this particular part of the structure. Most were shooting the entire building, the same picture that is on all of the post cards. I found these ancillary spires and domes on the edges of the Taj to be just as exquisitely proportioned and beautifully illuminated as the far more famous central dome. However they are not what people expect to see when they think of the Taj Mahal. Why shoot to the expectations of others? It only perpetuates pre-conceived notions – also known as clichés. Instead, why not photographically isolate beauty where you can find it, and make it your own? Why not go against the grain to make an asymmetrical photograph of a structure known primarily for its exquisite symmetry? Which is what I tried to do with this particular image of the Taj Mahal, an image that blends abstraction with the rich warmth of first light color to interpret the rhythmic, undulating flow of Mughal architecture.
09-DEC-2006
Shy child, Sebt-des-Gzoula, Morocco, 2006
We stopped at a large weekly market just outside of Essaouira, and noticed a young child cautiously watching me photograph. She was very shy, and avoided direct eye contact. When I saw her back away and press her head against a scarred wall, I made this photograph. It is the opposite of the clichés we usually associate with child portraiture. There are no smiles here, no acknowledgement of the camera. She seems to be away in her own world. An image such as this has a greater potential to express human values than the conventional smiling pose. I continued to photograph her and her family for a few more minutes, and she finally turned to the camera, but still remained a bit anxious. (You can see another image I made of her at that moment in my digital travel archive at
http://www.worldisround.com/edit/new/389245/photo5.html ) When I showed her the pictures I had made of her, her apprehension turned to delight.
20-SEP-2005
The Parthenon, Athens, Greece, 2005
The essence of ancient Greece is the Parthenon -- the central structure on the Acropolis that looks down on the city. Dedicated to the goddess Athena in 438 B.C., the Parthenon is revered for its classical perfection and is one of the world's most famous buildings. It has been used as a church, a mosque and an arsenal. It has been bombed and looted. Yet it still survives as the emblem of both the city and a civilization. It has been photographed over and over until almost any image of it runs the risk of becoming a cliché. To express my own impression of the golden Parthenon in early morning light, I don’t try to “show the whole thing.” I abstract it by including only a small portion of it in my frame, yet can still establish its scale by matching its size to two small visitors. I also made sure to incongruously include an ever-present construction crane that continues working on restoring the glory that was ancient Greece.
Overlooking Sagaing, Myanmar, 2005
Pictures of vistas, made from high hills or tall buildings, are a staple of travel photography. They are made so often, they have become travel clichés. Most are literal descriptions, and are not able to replicate the experience of being there. I usually avoid making such pictures, and hesitated making this one – until I saw the three monks on the rooftop in the foreground. The monks add expressive meaning to the picture, because of their scale incongruity and symbolic presence. Sagaing is a center of Burmese Buddhism, the temples that fill the picture are Buddhist temples, and what better way to humanize the image and make it speak than including three Buddhist monks on the temple roof in the foreground? A few moments later, they were gone. The opportunity to turn a cliché into a fresh vision was fleeting, and I was fortunate to have been there when those monks were walking on that roof.
18-JAN-2005
Mekong Sunrise, Chiang Rai, Thailand, 2005
A few hours before we crossed into Laos from Thailand, I was taking my morning walk along the Mekong as the sun came up, hoping I see a small fishing boat to include along with the reflection of a rising sun. When my wish was granted, I was still faced with the daunting task of making an image that would avoid the sameness of all the sunrise clichés we all make of life along a river. I had my pocket camera with me, a Canon Digital Elph, which does not offer either a long lens or a wideangle to stress an idea. I was limited to normal perspectives. The first thing I did was to shift my vantage point so the reflection of the sunrise was broken in half by a spit of land instead of being portrayed as a typical continuous line. I waited for the fisherman to start paddling, so I could get some activity into the image, instead of a fisherman just sitting or standing in his boat. That helped add some energy to the image. The sun rising on a misty river over a lone figure in his boat is a timeless image but still a borderline cliché, so I used one more option to change the atmosphere of the picture. I boosted the ISO to 400, knowing that it would give me “noise.” The noise turns the image into a form of impressionism, putting this picture somewhere between a painting and a photograph. There is dream-like quality to this image that expresses how I felt, standing on the bank of the Mekong in the mist, watching this fisherman slowly make his way home as the sun struggled to break through. I think it succeeds in overcoming a cliché label.
Hsinbyume Pagoda, Mingun, Myanmar, 2005
I visited Mingun’s most striking pagoda in the heat of a Burmese noon, which ruled out using morning or evening light to help express my feelings about this temple. I decided to frame the pagoda within an archway to give a sense of depth and perspective to the image. Yet I did so with misgivings. Framing subjects through archways is a time-honored technique that, while not bad or wrong, has become a cliché. So I did what I usually do. I waited for a person to move into my foreground. A Burmese woman soon stopped for a moment in the shade of the arch to adjust her sun turban. As she reached out to wrap the turban around her head, I made this image. Now it tells a story. Because I have abstracted her by turning her into a silhouette, she becomes a symbol for every visitor. We can now imagine what it must feel like to walk out of the shade into the blistering heat to visit this almost 200-year-old Buddhist pagoda rising on its seven concentric terraces in the distance. Instead of making a cliché, I have made a photo that invites you to join this vicarious experience.
15-OCT-2004
Canyon of the Merced from Valley View, Yosemite National Park, California, 2004
This image could almost be a “Kodak Moment” or picture postcard. In other words, this image was on its way to becoming just another pretty picture describing a beautiful scene. There is nothing wrong with such an image, of course. But pictures intended primarily as attractive descriptions are not a form of expressive photography. Would it be a cliché? Almost. Pretty of famous sights such as this one are made from the same spot in the same way over and over again. Eventually, such imagery fails to stimulate our imaginations and emotions. So what makes this particular image any different? How do I bring “fresh vision to a tired cliché? The top half of this picture is, indeed, a Kodak moment. On the left, we see 7,500-foot-high El Capitan, one of Yosemite’s most famous landmarks, in all of its pristine beauty, shot with a 24mm wideangle lens to add the context of the surrounding forests and cliffs. It’s the bottom half of the picture that departs from expectations, and involves what I feel is a fresh vision. I make sure that the Merced River, with its predictable reflection of El Capitan, is underexposed. I turn this river into a hauntingly dark channel, taking up almost half of the image. I position myself so that rocks break up the reflection of El Capitan, suggesting it, but not defining it. This image now becomes one with a split personality. The top is predictable, but the bottom is not. It challenges the imagination, conveys the sense of mystery, and yes, even suggests the possibility of tragedy that has always surrounded El Capitan, a rock-climbers dream. I must have had a premonition. Just a few days later, two El Capitan climbers would perish as an early fall blizzard swept through Yosemite.
25-AUG-2004
Sunset cliché? Somewhere off Land’s End, England 2004
When shooting sunsets, I usually try to capture their effect on other things, rather just than shoot a sunset itself, which is one of the most common clichés in photography. I can even tolerate a cliché sunset if it incorporates a context such as an impressive ship or mountain range in the distance, or a powerful, abstract anchor in the foreground. I’ll also exempt lovely landscapes enhanced by the afterglow of a setting sun from my list of clichés – because such images are not about the sun itself, but rather the colorful effect of the setting sun.
Just shooting a setting sun because it is “pretty” is a tired excuse for an expressive image. We’ve seen those sunsets over and over again. Must we make still another one? So why did I even bother picking up my camera to shoot this sunset from the balcony of a cruise ship at sea somewhere off Lands End, England? What makes this particular sunset picture a non-cliché? Because I think it tells a story that appeals to the imagination. A tale about a wispy cloud that just wouldn’t give up. It kept clinging to this setting sun all the way down to the sea, reluctant to let it go and watch it finally slip below the horizon. That little cloud, which resembled an artist’s casual brush stroke, is good enough to make this into a story telling image and avoid the cliché. Yet just as this sunset was about to touch the horizon, something else happened. The round sun suddenly became an oval sun – with the little cloud splitting it into yellow and orange halves. It’s obviously a trick of nature, an illusion – since I’ve never noticed an oval sun before. The only thing I could do was to hold my shot until there was maximum tension -- created by the smallest possible amount of space – between the sun and the water. I exposed on the sun with my spot meter to turn the water black and give the sun and sky gain maximum color intensity. And I made sure that I did not split the picture exactly in half with the horizon. There is more water here than sky, which avoids that static, balanced look that plagues so many sunset shots. Adding the sun-warping illusion, the little cloud that wouldn’t give up, and my own photographic decisions together, I feel was able to lift this sunset out of the cliché department and put it into my keeper file. Do you agree? Is this a story-telling picture or just another sunset cliché? Please comment. Thanks.
14-JUN-2004
Wet laundry, Shanghai, China, 2004
Walking the streets of Old Shanghai in the pouring rain, I noticed this man watching me from an upstairs window. Why the scowl? Could it be his soaking wet laundry? Perhaps – we shall never know. However I do know that by including that laundry in this frame, I avoided one of the oldest travel photo clichés of them all, the face in the widow picture. I know this cliché well – I’ve taken them myself, and have had my fill. I’ll leave the face in window (usually an upper story window) to others. If I make such a shot, I want to make sure that there is something else in the frame to add context and perhaps offer a reason for the person’s expression. I think the soggy laundry handling limply below this fellow’s grouchy gaze offers a possible explanation for his mood. And that’s why I think this shot manages to go beyond the tired cliché approach.
19-APR-2004
Sidewalk Siesta, Tecate, Mexico, 2004
The animals we see most frequently on our travels are usually dogs and cats. I choose not to use these sleeping dogs as subject matter in this picture, and instead go beyond the cliché by using them instead as context. I think this scene conveys the tranquility of a quiet neighborhood in this small Mexican town. These slumbering dogs are free to block the sidewalk, unmindful of the oncoming footsteps.
16-APR-2004
Canine Quartet, Balboa Park, San Diego, California, 2004
I could have easily made a cliché shot of the three cute white dogs posing for me on a park bench, and it might have been a lovely cliché at that. But I wanted to do more with this image. The incongruity of the three leashes coming together on the ground, the distracted brown dog at left who wants nothing to do with its colleagues, and the hand of the owner extending a bag of dog droppings into the frame, all combine to create a surreal scene. I held my camera over my head and shot down, leading the eye diagonally from the poop sack at left to the leashes on the sidewalk at lower right.
18-APR-2004
Mission Bay, San Diego, California, 2004
Flowers are irresistible subjects, and often make breathtaking beautiful pictures. But I look for more than just beauty in my pictures – I want my images to express ideas about what I see and where I’ve been. While taking an early morning walk around Mission Bay, I passed the tiny front yard of a beach house and spotted a kayak slung between a pair of very dirty plastic garden chairs. Behind the kayak was a striking array of sunflowers and roses. I saw an incongruity here – the ornamentation of the lovely floral display juxtaposed against the raw utility of kayak storage. Instead of making just another cliché picture of pretty flowers, I use those blossoms as incongruous context here. This picture, which I made with a small Canon Digital Elph pocket camera, tell us that this homeowner gets the most out of every inch of space yet still manages to envelope it in flowering beauty.
16-APR-2004
Plant on plant, Balboa Park, San Diego, California, 2004
Close up photography of natural subjects can reveal things we do not ordinarily see, but after awhile, my close-up images sometimes begin to all look alike. One way to move beyond the cliché macro photo is to juxtapose one form upon another to create a contrast that results in meaning. While visiting Balboa Park’s spectacular Botanical Garden I noticed a leaf of one plant overlapping a much larger leaf of another. Leaves are living things – the light and water gatherers of plant life. How different this pair of leaves appears in structure, texture, color, and form. This image makes me ponder the wonder of nature. I welcome all of those tiny flaws and scars as much as I savor the contrasts in these lush, tropical patterns.
16-APR-2004
Chase on Mission Beach, San Diego, California, 2004
You can find pictures of happy kids and beautiful sunsets in most travel albums and web pages. That’s not a bad thing – because such clichés can bring back personal memories of great value. But I try to do whatever it takes to avoid clichés if I can. I can often do so by using abstraction. Here I combine both sunset and youthful subject matter by abstracting them into a chase scene. By backlighting these people, they become silhouettes. I also abstract the sunset by stressing its effect, rather than depicting its beauty. The key to this photo is the child in the middle of the frame – he is incongruously small when compared to the adults he is chasing.
17-APR-2004
Point Loma Harbor, San Diego, California, 2004
Another way to avoid the standard sunset cliché (which we all love to take) is to shoot the effect of the sunset instead of photographing the sunset itself. In this shot, taken from Point Loma Harbor opposite downtown San Diego, the sun is at my back. It illuminates the cloud overhead, which in turn reflects on the water. Two other factors work for me here: the shaded skyline abstracts the city – it’s there, but it does not compete with the delicate golden colors in the cloud and on the water. And the gull I happened to catch has just broken free of the clouds and soars against a clear blue sky. I know – this shot comes very close to the line between cliché and non-cliché, but I’m a sucker for the gull in the sky shot. Yet this gull works because it is so small, and does not conflict with the beauty of scene. It brings an extra touch of the sea to this image, and that’s what a harbor scene is all about.
19-APR-2004
Pride, Tecate, Mexico, 2004
Travel portraits often become clichés – we can see the same happily smiling faces looking into our cameras all over the world. You can’t very well tell people not to smile, right? So you take the shot and move on. While looking for pictures in Tecate with fellow pbase artist Wendy Owens, we came upon a taco stand and struck up a conversation with the staff. We asked if we might take their pictures, and they said they would be honored. As we showed them the digital images on our viewing screens, they became more and more involved in the photographic process. At one point, I asked all three of them to gather behind the food they are preparing and pose for me. I wanted more than just smiles. I wanted context for those smiles. When the chef spontaneously grabbed his cleaver and threw back his shoulders I knew I had made an effective group portrait. The gesture and expressions are honest, not faked for the camera. The food and cleaver add context for meaning. This image is more than just a picture of three people having their picture taken. It is about the bonds that unite them as a group – pride in their work, a friendship, and perhaps even familial relationship. It is a portrait rich in human values – we care about these people because they seem to care so much about what they do, and who they are.
15-APR-2004
Old Point Loma Lighthouse, San Diego, California, 2004
I could have made a standard lighthouse travel cliché, and even framed it within a tree, but I restrained myself from doing so. Instead I went inside of this historic lighthouse and climbed to the top of the spiral staircase leading to the light itself. When I looked down, I saw this marvelous spiral form exploding into my frame like a giant snail. But to move beyond clichés, we must think about meaning, not just form for the sake of form. As I peered into the stairwell, I saw one of my photographic colleagues climbing up to join me. When she was just below me, she asked if she was intruding on my shot. I answered, “No, you just made my picture.” Her hand on the railing symbolizes a human journey that begins in light and ends in the gathering darkness at the top of the stairs, very much as in life itself. By using spot metering off the furthest and brightest part of the picture, I make the darkness rise within the image and thereby express my idea.
16-APR-2004
The Plunge, Belmont Amusement Park, San Diego, California, 2004
For some reason, photographers enjoy making pictures of words, usually in the form of signage. A sign often offers us a handy visual label of where we’ve been. Unfortunately, such pictures often become clichés. To make sign pictures that goes beyond clichés, I use signs within a context that makes them work. In this shot of an amusement park’s indoor salt-water swimming pool under renovation, I shot its sign through a series of barriers. The rusty fencing and barbed wire tell my viewers that they may stand on dangerous ground here. These barriers provide one layer of meaning. Another layer of meaning comes from the ominous shadow of the huge ornamental gate, which rises behind me. The gate offers two vast arches for entry, yet once beyond this gate, we are met with steel and wire. The sign itself becomes part of the context – it gives us the name of the facility and the date it was originally opened. It is not the words of the sign that convey meaning here. The meaning comes from the context that supports them.
17-APR-2004
Campo Santo. Old Town San Diego, California, 2004
Much of what we see when we travel is historical in nature. We dutifully point our cameras at old buildings, monuments, and cemeteries and make the past into a series of clichés. To bring the past to life, and avoid making a cliché out of it at the same time, I shot an old grave marker resting on its back in a 19th Century cemetery, as a series of shadows marched across it. The shadow, cast by a picket fence that surrounds the grave, represents more than just a nice pattern. To me, it expresses the relentless passage of time itself. The cycle of life repeats itself over and over again, as the lines of the fence and the scattered leaves and blossoms imply. I am not photographing an old gravesite here as much as I am expressing a point of view on the temporary nature of life itself.
16-APR-2004
Fountain, Balboa Park, San Diego, California, 2004
Statues, sculpture and fountains provoke additional cliché photographs. And I’ve certainly shot my share of them over the years. To break free from such cliché approaches, I try to bring meaning to such pictures by expressing the symbolic nature of the statue or sculpture. In this case, I held off shooting this sculpture until mid-day, when the high sun brings strong, high-key contrast in light, as well as deep texture to the stone face. This light would be very bad for human portraits, but it is wonderful for textured stone subjects such as this one. When I felt the light on the subject was strong enough, I moved close to the sculpture to fill the frame and confront the viewer with the intensity of both the lighting contrasts and the powerful texture. I was very careful to frame the subject within the softly focused dark archway in the background, which gives the picture a sense of depth. The result: instead of a static overall image of the statue, which sits in the middle of small fountain, I’ve made an image that demands the attention of the viewer. Its gaze seems relaxed, yet viewed at this intimate distance in such defining light, this face becomes an eternal and enigmatic symbol of survival.
18-APR-2004
Gargoyle, Villa Montezuma, San Diego, California, 2004
I also see numerous clichés involving buildings in travel photos. Most of them are shot from a distance so as to embrace the entire structure, and are descriptive, rather than expressive, in nature. When I approach a building as a subject for a photograph, I look for details that make it unique, and then try to stress those details rather than describe the entire structure. San Diego’s bizarre Villa Montezuma was built in the 19th Century as the whimsically eccentric home of musician/artist Jesse Shephard. Now owned by the San Diego Historical Society, you can see an image of the entire house on its website at:
http://www.sandiegohistory.org/mainpages/locate5.htm
Note the difference between the website’s overall view of the house and my own interpretation here. With the help of a short telephoto lens, I was able to build an image around a solitary gargoyle on one corner of the house, using the weather vane and turret as context. More than any other detail, that gargoyle captures the essence of the Victorian era. There are many other strikingly incongruous Victorian touches inside the house, but interior photography is not allowed, so this gargoyle will have to say it all.
18-APR-2004
Hidalgo Plaza, Tecate, Mexico, 2004
In the center of the small Mexican border town of Tecate, there is a well-kept Plaza surrounding a bandstand. Wrought iron benches encircle the bandstand, occupied at mid-day by Tecate residents who chat with their friends, relax in the sun, or nod off to sleep. Photographing such a place as this is really a form of “street photography,” another major source of travel picture clichés. Most street scenes are chaotic, jumbled renderings of people walking down a street. To bring fresh vision to bear on street photographs, we must find ways to simplify the structure of the picture so that the body language of the subjects is clearly defined and without distraction. When I brought my cameras to bear on Tecate’s Hidalgo Plaza, I searched for a simple background, and found it in the stone base of the bandstand and in the shadows surrounding it. This backdrop gives precedence to the bench sitters in the foreground and to the large open area in front of them. Using a 24mm wide-angle converter lens, I moved in on the fellow sitting on the bench in the foreground, and shot him for a while, using his body language as the anchor for my images. Eventually someone else wearing a western hat came by, and when he did, I photographed this scene as he and his shadow slip away from the man on the bench – leaving him alone. And that’s what this picture is about - loneliness. I would like to know what the man sitting before us might be thinking at this moment, and where the other fellow may be heading. This image is strong enough to ask such questions of its viewers, taking it out of the realm of cliché photos.
15-APR-2004
Old Town Plaza, San Diego, California, 2004
Another plaza, another cliché. That’s often the case in travel photography. I was able to beat the cliché here by doing three things, which hopefully might change the ordinary into the extraordinary for some viewers. First, I came to Old Town San Diego’s historic plaza at sunset, which offered rich color and warm light. Secondly, I treat the plaza as I would a landscape photograph. The essence of landscape photography is the creation of the illusion of depth to give the viewer a sense of spaciousness. I obtain this depth by using the wide-angle lens, which helps me to envelope the tree, people, and table beneath it within a field of glowing emerald grass. And third, I chose to shoot a table featuring people avidly listening to a portable radio, its antenna adorned with patriotic flags. Three “leading lines” on the grass carry the eye to the people at that table -- the long, rich shadows cast by the tree, the flags on the antenna, and the bike at lower right.