You could say that anyone away from home is traveling. So anyone who gets on a bicycle with a camera to photograph sheep on a nearby dike is doing travel photography. Travel is about what is new to you—the unexpected.
You know this little dike, the trees, and the grass, but you cannot know in advance what you will actually find.
All right, we are at the dike now. Beside me stands a photographer from Farawayland. He has never seen anything like it. He thinks it is beautiful and sets about making travel photographs here. It differs from what he knows elsewhere, and he photographs whatever surprises and moves him. To him, it is ‘new.’
The trees and the dike in harmonious perspective are worth photographing for both of us. For me, different things are new within the same scene, seen from another perspective.
You do need to feel at ease, but if my mood allows it, I too can see what is ‘new’ here. Look: the grass is different—its shade of green, its length, the sweep made by the wind. The light is softer, or harsher, or the sheep have gone.
Different light alone changes everything. Guided by our own motivations and sense of wonder, we are therefore making roughly the same photograph here at this moment: something ‘new.’
Traveling far is quite an undertaking. But once you arrive, everything is new—an abundance that is almost too difficult to choose from. That is the other side of it.
