| |
 |
| © Jim Richardson |
| Click photo to see more images. |
Jim Richardson has a special fondness for the Celtic rim, that swath of ancient, mysterious settlement running from Scotland to the Iberian peninsula. "I never cease to enjoy poking around on its strange one-lane back roads," says the photographer. "On the western edge it can get pretty wild." But while he has covered the subject extensively for both National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler magazines, he confesses that the technique he applies to it is not much different than what he has used to shoot China, Africa, and even the small Kansan town of Cuba, which he has been documenting for 30 years. "If you were to look at my work you might say that I take the same kinds of pictures in far-flung places as I do in Cuba," says Richardson, himself a Kansas native. "Just like I might hang around the barbershop in Cuba looking for pictures, I'd seek out the local barbershop if I was in western China or Ireland. The great lesson for me is that human needs are pretty consistent around the world."
|
|
|
Richardson's main advice to photographers who want to improve their travel photographs derives from that lesson. It is simply to seek out the places that minister to human needs, whether physical, social, or spiritual -- markets, pubs, or churches -- and then to stay there and shoot until the culture reveals itself. "You'll see how those needs are met in other lands by other people," he says.
You can talk f-stops, shutter speeds, and workflow until you're as blue in the face as a Celt on the warpath, but it doesn't address the fundamental problem of taking meaningful pictures in another culture: access. How do you work your way into that society, whether a small American town or a populous Chinese city? How do you communicate your purpose in taking pictures to the people you're photographing? "Not all cultures really understand the kinds of pictures I'm there to make," says Richardson, who describes his genre of photography as cultural documentary. "I'm really confusing to them because I don't want them to stand in a row in front of a wall. Even in Scotland there were many times when people didn't get it that I just wanted to shoot around the edges of the day, as [National Geographic photographer] Bill Allard likes to say, until something of their inner life was revealed. No, they were there to have their picture taken!"
Richardson says that if you can't explain your purpose directly you may have to resort to "subterfuge." In both Kansas and China, for example, he has found himself in the position of trying to convince a schoolteacher to be photographed along with her pupils. "Both times I told her that the kids wouldn't behave if she didn't stand there with them," he recalls. "That way, she didn't have to be officially shy." Other times, says Richardson, he has made himself as "boring" as possible. "If you hang around long enough, don't talk much, and look a little dumb, people give up on you as entertainment and go back to business," he explains. But the photographic payoff for that patience is big. "It's a spine-tingling moment when someone starts to open up for me," he says, "and I realize that they're speaking through me to others they will never know, by letting me intrude into their life. It's a gift."
Finding a reliable translator and guide can make a huge difference in a travel photographer's success, says Richardson. "At National Geographic we call them fixers -- somebody who knows the lay of the land, speaks the language, and can help you through the etiquette and protocols of the place." Geographic shooters often get fixer recommendations by networking with photographers who've covered the same ground, but less connected photographers have other options. "It might be as simple as finding a local student who wants to practice his English with you," he says.
The fixer's inside knowledge can help you avoid taking the obvious pictures. But even if you end up photographing a tourist site you can make fresh pictures by "going against the grain," says Richardson, whose research often includes reading novels set in his destination (in Scotland's case, a series of murder mysteries set in Edinburgh) to pick up its social undercurrents. If you're worried that your photograph of the Taj Mahal will be cluttered with merchants selling trinkets in the foreground, then make those people a deliberate part of the image, he suggests, and create a picture that's more about culture and less about architecture. "The things you might have considered just to be in your way before can actually become subjects," says Richardson. "Sometimes I actually tell my workshop students that they should let their pictures be a little messy. It leaves more real life in them. Because what I'm talking about is not trophy pictures, but photography that's about the travel experience."
This advice reflects Richardson's belief that the fundamental purpose and nature of travel photography have changed. "It used to be that travel photography was done for people who would never go to the place," he says. "You photographed the Taj Mahal to show it to people who never expected to see it themselves. But now we all expect to go everywhere, everyone's got a life list of places they want to see before they die. So travel photography should be as much about what it feels like to be in a place as how that place looks."
|
