Monday, May 18, 2009

holiday snaps


My current rules of thumb for tourist spots (i) photograph tourism (ii) photograph tourists photographing...   So, for the most part, I've been avoiding all shots that make it look as though I'm in Untrammeled Nature (o.k., apart from the cute little cinnamon colored baby buffalo, etc.), and making a deliberate attempt to think about how nature is packaged, guarded, informatively presented, rendered relatively safe, and so on.   The National Parks Service do a particularly unobtrusive but helpful (and so far as Native Americans are concerned, respectful) job in the South Dakota Badlands, and I love the way in which some of the photography on their information boards can be rendered seamless with the actual sky and rock.

One side effect of traveling on one's own and with a respectable looking camera is that people size one up, and beg a favor of one: will I take their photograph?   Of course!  I say - but please, in return, can I take a photo of you, so that I can remember meeting you?  (that surely comes under the heading of Disingenuous Strategies...)...  But this couple seem happy enough with the result of my picture of them...


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