Exotic or Local?

Question

I don't know about you, but I don't really have the time or resources to go exotic places to take pictures (unless its a family vacation) so most of my pictures are urban or suburban locals. I think that my pictures are still interesting, though-but what would you prefer, an exotic area or the exotic in the usual?

Snapshooters...whatever.

Answer 1

This is a cool question. I go places (so called exotic) make images and the locals ask me where i "took" the shot? They look at the same places every day of their lives!

When you can capture things people look at everyday and present them in a different light from an angle not used by most, then go traveling.

Personally I have ruined some holidays by chasing images all day long. Dont do that anymore. Also I hear of people taking 5000 shots on holiday - the images have to be crap, how can any thought go into them? I tend to spend hours on just one or two images in the field, its easier looking at two or three great compositions and exposures than looking at hundreds of crap to find a lucky shot. - thats my angle

Most people think they have to leave town to get great shots, even if they live in Africa, Europe or Australasia? Great shots are about light quality and difference.

Go out during the golden hours and shoot shoot shoot.

For me location means nothing its the light I use and the way I record the subject.

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Answer 2

It is not difficult to go to an exotic location and take amazing photos. Photos of exotic locations rarely speak of the photographer, but speak merely for the location itself.
On the other hand it is a challenge to take the everyday, local or benign subject matter:person, place or thing and make it exotic. The sign of true artists is that they can take the familiar and make it unfamiliar and new to us, as if we are seeing it for the first time.
Look at some of the great photographers: Henri Cartier Bresson, Diane Arbus,Magnum photographers, and the various FSA photographers etc... These photographers take photos in some of the most common places.
Like they tell writers, you should write about what you know, and the same can be said for photographers, photograph what you know...give us insight into your world.

Answer 3

Exotic in the usual. I think there is something intriguing and wonderful about capturing normal people in normal environments, especially if they are done in sepia or b/w.

The best pictures are ones where the subject isn't looking at the camera, just going on with business as usual, like an old man wearing a 1920's style hat buying fish at the local fish market and then done in black and white. Those pictures always seem to take you emotionally to that place you took a picture of.

Answer 4

Sometimes there are "exotic" locations close to home.

Examples:

I live in Ohio.
We have a NHL team, the Columbus Blue jackets,
2 football teams(Benals/Browns),
womens pro football(Columbus Comets).
There is the Franklin Park Conservatory(exotic flowers/plants/butterflies),
Dawes Arboretum(acres of trees, ponds, animals landscapes),
The Wilds - like a zoo, but themed like a safari. Animals are in large acre sized areas, and you can travel along inside the areas with the animals
Hocking Hills - large gorges carved out by the glaciers from the last ice age, great plants, animals, waterfalls and landscapes.
Waterfalls all over the place as well as caves.
Festivals like nobodies business: Rennaisance Festival, Cultural festivals(asian, greek, gay/lesbian/holiday parades), art festivals.
Metro Parks - land claimed by the State and made into parks for everyone to use.

All of these are day trips for me, or they can be longer if I so choose.

You don't have to go to "exotic" locations. It's nice from time to time, but I'd say 80% of all my images of nature are from this state.

Answer 5

Since most of us spend the majority of our time where we live and work, we have to learn to see instead of just looking. If we really tried we could take a year or more to photograph our town. Think about it - how many photos could you take of just one street between sunrise and sunset?

The diner that opens at 6am and its customers; the street sweeper; empty parking lots; maybe a newspaper seller on the corner; the changing light as the sun moves higher in the sky; a garbage truck rumbling down an alley; shop owners opening their shops; kids walking to school; parking lots filling as people arrived at work. I think you get the idea.

In our all too familiar world we tend to lose sight of things. It all becomes visual muzak. If I came to your town, or you to mine, our eyes would be seeing all the new and different things we weren't familiar with. We'd see photographs instead of the visual muzak.

Answer 6

I would prefer exotic typically, just because of the sense of color you can get from them but it all depends on how you present/take your photos

Answer 7

It depends, I like both.

I think it takes a better "eye" to depict common scenes with a different slant than it does to take a picture of a famous statue in, say Brazil.