Study your own city.
Once I was hanging out on the Banana Island underneath the Long Bien Bridge minding my own business, I was approached by two foreigners, a German and an American. After the greetings, we learnt that we were all photographers and exchanged Instagram. They proceeded to ask me if I could suggest some good places for street photography in Hanoi so they could explore in the next two days before leaving, and I was literally stunned for a moment. I hesitated which ones I should show them.
I believe that tourists and locals look at the city differently. When we come to a new place, chances are we want our viewers to know where we shoot the picture. The tourists need iconic spots as an extra piece of information. They also look for traditional clothing, professions or goods, anything that screams “local”. What is a better way to tell people at home that I have come to Paris than showing them the Eiffel tower? Local photographers, on the other hand, avoid those places. It is not that there is anything wrong with those areas, but we are so used to them that we do not find them tempting anymore. Plus, since they are tourist attractions, the Internet is flooded with their photos anyway, so unless we find a creative way to work the scene, a new story to tell, our pictures will be cliché at best.
Being able to avoid cliché is one thing, to dig deep into a story is another advantage of the local photographers. Several days ago, I came across a video about a photobook called “TTP” by Hayashima Tomiyasu. He shot a ping pong table for 4 years from the same viewing angle. There is nothing special about the said table or the photographer’s technique, but the long period of time and the diverse activities of people around it forms a great story where the table became a witness of the neighborhood’s ever-changing lives. The connection created by the book is delicate, reminds me of the tree in my primary school where I used to wait for my mother to pick me up. I believe everyone has a “friend” like that in our childhood, who silently stayed there and bonded with us without us knowing.
4 years is surely a long time, and it is very difficult for visitors to carry out a project like Hayashima Tomiyasu’s. They do not live there, so it’s hard to pick a constant spot to come back to. They stay for a short period of time, so of course they cannot take pictures of the table on all occasions. Hayashima Tomiyasu almost had an obsession with that project that he even skipped appointments, Christmas or New Year to make sure no moment slipped away.
Being local photographers, we can read the atmosphere. There are two scenarios when I am in a strange place. The first one is that I have irrational fear over everything. How are people going to react? Am I going to get mugged? Do they allow me to enter there to take pictures? Will they get mad? The second scenario is I get over-confident or over-hyped that I spam shutter clicks everywhere or get myself into troubles, especially in another country where the language is a huge obstacle, and the culture differences are immersive. I do not have to worry about all those in my hometown, and if I am a stranger to a particular area in the city, I can always come back several times and get to know the place.
I know it might seem boring shooting a place over and over again, and I am not at all against traveling for inspiration and exploration. The point is that you should not feel bad if you cannot go to fancy sightseeing or famous cities. Take time to study your own city, shoot it at different times, in different weather; try new subjects, meet strangers, make friends, help them, listen to their story; update your gears; switch back and forth between black and white and color; etc. Any subtle changes in your point of view would result in the pictures you take and would enrich the story in different aspects.
