I just got home from a whistle-stop tour of Cincinnati I flew out on Saturday and flew home Thursday night / Friday morning. This trip provoked some thought for me as I have done several work trips to the USA since starting my degree and my regained interest in Photography. I have traveled for many years for work and in the beginning I took a camera then gradually as I was not using it got left behind, so I now look back on the last fifteen years of lost images with some regret, however now I have it all worked out, my tripod fits diagonally in my suitcase with the head removed I have an over the shoulder small case that takes three lenses the camera and my extender plus a bunch of bits and bobs the flash and my right angle eyepiece go in the case. All Set! I wish, the problem is not the will to take images its the opportunity, my last trip to Chicago and North Carolina were really tough to find things to take, which sounds stupid except that in Chicago, I was really quite a way out and, I found that stopping to take an image was really difficult, in North Carolina it’s beautiful they have laws that prevent them from building higher than the tree line, cool right? Wrong! that means all you can see is pine trees and there are only so many pictures you can take of tightly packed young pine trees. You really can’t see many buildings and security runs you off if you try to take photos from their parking lots!
The trip I just did was the opposite and far more frustrating, I stayed in the city and on the way in there was a beautiful sky line with all the sky scrapers and guess what nowhere you can stop to take pictures the best view of it is from the highway oh and some awesome iron Bridges too so frustrating, my stupid bad leg is also getting in the way as its limiting how far I can walk, I really think I may have to go on a fitness kick to keep up with my new photographic passion. I did manage to find a spot where I could get some images of one of the bridges however the position made it hard to get good uncluttered images as there were so many signs and lights and posts crossing the view no matter where stood.
It rather silly that most people would moan that they can’t afford to go to places like I do for work and take pictures and here I am moaning that I can get there and am not much better off.
As I see it I have several problems to solve, first my mobility which is a hard nut to crack, I have just bought a stick with a seat on it so I can rest my leg while out shooting so that may help. I am convinced I need to go on some sort of health kick, not a short-term solution.
Next it’s having a plan, somehow I need to figure out a plan ahead of time that puts me in the right place and allows me to capture the important local images.
I don’t really know how to deal with the problem of not being able to stop to take images I guess the plan might help.
Cincinnati was just too short a trip there was a lot of interesting subject matter and no time to get to it. At least I have a regular client with offices there so I may get another chance.
As to North Carolina, I have o solution some places are lovely but not photogenic, that can’t be true can it! I’ll just try harder with the plan when I am there again.
That leads me to my biggest regret / photographic desire, it’s a few years since I was in Atlanta, and when I was last there, I wanted to get a photo of two big sky scrapers called the king and queen, which literally look like chess pieces, when lit at night they are stunning, I never found the right spot to get the image I want and it has been a photographic desire since then to get that image. I am hopeful that next year I will be visiting Atlanta and I can fulfil that dream.
As I write this blog entry I have just thought how cool it would be to start a bucket list, everything I would like to photograph before I die, it’s a cool idea don’t you think, the king and queen are going to the top of mine.
This has been an odd post but it’s an attempt to document what I am thinking with regard to my photography, I actually found it helped clear my thinking and now I have a cool new project to set up the bucket list, think I may share that on the OCA forums