Ich war ein paar Tage in Paris und da habe ich natürlich ein paar Fotos gemacht. Es gibt was vom Louvre bis hin zum Eiffelturm und allgemeine Fotos 🙂
Schwierig in diesen Reisefotografien ist stets eine Linse dabei zu haben, die auch für jede Situation passt. Meist benutze ich das 50mm Objektiv, da ich es auch schon in Thailand mitgenommen habe und auch immer so zurecht kam damit. Ich sehe mich jedoch stets in den Grenzen, wenn es dann doch platztechnisch nicht klappt…aber bei größeren Gebäuden und etwas Abstand klappt das bisher, wie man auf den Fotos sehen kann 🙂
This is a rather personal post, I guess, so be warned.
I encountered several occasions where my photos were compared with photos of other photographers in my close circle. I am way behind those photographers, I know that. And this is somehow the problem. They are way more famous, way more popular with my friends and just have the leap forward I do not have. It takes time. I try to shoot more and more. I ask almost every friend if they want to take photos. I try to get better. Of course I get inspiration by other artists, films or just my own imagination. The latter seems so unimportant when it comes to similar photos to other photographers. In my case I always here something like „oh, you have a similar style to so and so„, „oh, I have seen that style before„. It just sucks. You feel as if you did nothing, just copy.
My problem with this seems that I still have to find my style and work on it step by step. With this I try out a lot of things and in small steps I explore for myself what I really like in a photo. I knew from way before my ambitious time in photography that I liked back-shots. And it seems that even that won’t be recognized when the more famous photographers do it. Then they again will say „oh, a back-shot, didn’t so and so done that?“ „you like them back-shots, huh? So and so, as well„. I effing know. I kind of just want to cry out like a little teenage girl „I liked it waaaay earlier than the other one did!“. But I have to accept that as an artist who wants to get better you have to be compared to others, who ARE better. It just seems so unfair that own ideas won’t be recognized. It just sucks.
Furthermore, the well known photographers are not the inventor of all things. Inspiration comes from all things. You can just like the same stuff. It can happen. It just won’t be seen as that, if those two are too close together. I sometimes still struggle with all of this and question myself if I really like what I do. That is the worst part and nobody should get into that stadium. When you are questioning everything you like, you kind of are beginning to stop what you do and dislike your work. Stopping, thats the worst you could do. You should just keep going on. The comparisons will still be there, I guess. You could enlarge the distance to other photographers, even with small things, like changing themes of your blog or how you present your photos to the public eye. I don’t have the solution on everyones personal case, but the most important thing, in my opinion, is to keep on going. I experienced this myself by stopping for a bit and drowning in self-misery. It may be not as harsh as it sounds like, but I think I am not the only one who has self-doubt to some certain extend.
Ohyeah, writing about it helps as well. I like to put my thoughts onto the screen or paper, so I can put that and this thought on the side and move on. It is also a great tip for other problems as well. Well, I don’t want to beginn sounding like a author of selfhelp books. The thing you (and I) have to keep in mind is, that the comparisons will not stop, the critique will not stop and it is not beneficial at all to get distracted by all of this when you have fun doing what your are doing. It reminds me of a quote I heard some time ago: „It’s easier to steer a moving ship, than a ship who stands still„. I like those quotes. They are optimistic, dreamy and often very true.
A couple of weeks ago I was in Marocco, visited Casablanca, Rabat and Marrakesh. What I noticed in my behaviour is that I was very wary of my camera. You have to be that way, always. I think you can’t feel really safe anywhere you are, whether you are in your country or somewhere else. It can always happen that somebody sees your camera gear and wants to steal it. In an unknown country, however, I get very cautious and get a little paranoid, especially in not too touristy areas of the city, i.e. small streets, where the common people always tell you that this and that street are closed and I had to go the other way (yes, that happened). It is a kind of paranoid time, where you think you definately get mobbed. The same happened in Thailand, where a taxi brought me off the main street and stopped at a remote place for a few minutes. Besides having my gear stolen I thought I get physically hurt. Anyway, that’s another story 😀
In Marocco it’s even more weird having a camera out, because I was there with my girlfriend and that means that a lot of men will be looking at us. This is a common way of living there. Every woman outside of Marocco are seen as exotic. So we where looked at and so my camera, which I often put away, so it would not be so noteworthy to others.
This all can be my own fear of having things stolen or the actual case of real danger. Nothing happend, thank god (or other imaginary creatures). In Marocco I mostly took photos of the street, no asking strangers to pose or something like that. I’ve read a lot about the conservative nature of the people. They do not want to get photographed as easily as european people maybe and especially not in their religious surroundings. I kinda needed to learn that with this research and I did not try to offend them in any way. One small story was in the mosque Hassan II, the second biggest mosque in the world. There are only muslim men allowed in. If you saw my photo on my About Me page you can see that I do not exactly look muslim like the other maroccan people. In fact, I am muslim, on paper anyways. And I really wanted to get into the mosque! First I tried to get in with the dslr, but of course they would not let me. Then I just walked in (after some discussion with one guy if I am muslim or not…) with an iPhone in my pocket. Inside I did not want to take pictures right away, rather wait until everybody prays and then take them. I could not imagine how they would behave if I just went in to take photos after I told them I could pray (which I can’t, not in the proper way anyway). After a few minutes sitting down at the end of the hallway I saw another young guy grabbing his phone and taking photos. I observed him a little, the others as well. The other men were not even praying, they talked or just lay down and cooled off from the hot sun. So I felt a little more comfortable to take photos as well. I still could not walk as freely as I wanted to, so they were just snapshots to hold the visit in my memory.
After some time I thought that I could not possibly stay there for too long, so I went out with a bit of a rushing heartbeat. I did it 😀 This was one of the experiences I had with the more religious side of things in Marocco. It was nothing compared to Thailand, where it is so normal to take photos inside the temples. The reason may well be the amount of tourists and the culture to nourish them. Marocco is not up to this standard and that is good. With this it will stay not too touristy and still a little more dangerous to take photographs, I guess. In any case, if you just be discrete, don’t offend people, then it should be alright – just like any other place in the world.
After the north part of Thailand I wanted to go to the south and enjoy some beaches on some islands. I had only one week left, so I could not go everywhere. First I had to get to the south by flying to Krabi (skipping Phuket) with the plan to go to Koh Phi Phi and Koh Lanta. I did go to the islands, but after this part I still had to go the same way back to Bangkok for my flight back. So firstly I show the Krabi part. The only beach I visited was the Railey Beach. Krabi on its own was a little too quiet, nothing much to see. The highlight would be the Tiger Temple on top a mountain. You had to take the stairs, 1237 steps to be exact. This was very exhausting, but worth it. Other than that there wasn’t much to see unfortunately.
I still hope you like the photos and feel free to connect with me via Facebook, Instagram or Twitter 🙂
There has been a lot of buzz about Pai. I had to go there, everybody said. And after my visit I can say they were right. Pai has the reputation as the small city, where you can chill all day, enjoy the landscape and yeah, take drugs, I guess. I met some people who were there for a couple of weeks even. For me Pai was great because of some very cool landscapes and my first experiences on a scooter. I shot a lot of photos one sunset over the mountains and could have used all of them. I chose some photos I want to share with you here. In it is the Lod Cave, the Pai Mountain, the Memorial Bridge and some general shots I did there.
I hope you like them and feel free to connect via Facebook, Instagram or Twitter! 🙂
Soo…what I did: I imported everything from khitostrol.wordpress.com into my main blog. Why? Because it seemed that everything that I did while being on the other site got directed into my writing blog, where I really did not do much in the last months and won’t in the next.
I know, it is a rather sudden to change everything, but I think the three followers can handle it 😀
Let’s see if this works out. If not, I will change it again or stick to this forever.
My first big trip. Alone. I needed almost one month to finally muster up the courage to click on that „booking“ button for the flight to Thailand. I am glad that I did it eventually. First I wanted to go away for about three months, then I decided to be away for one month, at the end I should have booked for a longer time. It is always like that, the travel bug gets’ya. Still, I enjoyed the month in Thailand, although there were some hickups. I want to go back to asia in the future that’s for sure.
My trip involved these locations in chronological order: Bangkok – Ayutthaya – Chiang Mai – Chiang Rai – back to Chiang Mai – Pai – Krabi – Koh Phi Phi – Koh Lanta – Krabi – Bangkok
Because this is my photography blog I only want to get into the photography side of my journey. I shot almost 3000 photos, the iPhone ones included. Most of the time I just wanted to remember stuff, locations etc. just for me, so these will never get to the public. There won’t be so many photos which are artistically worth mentioning. I just took my time with my back-series (click here for that). The other ones are just for pure documentation.
At first I did not have the courage to take every photograph I want, because I didn’t want to harass the people. With time I got a better feeling for Thailand and therefore got more out of myself and even asked people to stand for me in front of a background. I still don’t like the feeling of taking photos of different cultures. Somehow it feels like they are some kind of zoo animal and the visitor takes photos of them, because they are so different. To make it worse, they want to get photographed, because then they get money or more leverage to get more money out of it. I mean, these were the people who dressed up exactly for that reason or live off off the tourism business. The „real“ thai people I asked did not want a picture of them taken, so I let it be. At the end I just wanted to capture the atmosphere of the places I’ve been, not forgetting to make it interesting somehow of course.
I think I have to split up the photos into parts, because it’s easier to pinpoint where everything was. The first photos are from my flights, my hostel, Wat Pho and the streets I walked around in Bangkok.
Feel free to comment and connect 🙂
So, I finally got to the final posts of my change and can post new stuff, which I already did with my photos of Alina. The other things which will be coming soon are my photos of Thailand and another shooting with Ole. I already did an unplanned shooting with Ole on a lazy sunday afternoon. Now I wanted to plan it a little more and had some ideas how I wanted it. He plays the violine, which can be a great asset and I really wanted to establish a contrast with his suit/violine playing to the background. I still need to sort them out some more and then comes the editing. The „problem“ is that I will be gone again for two weeks in Marocco next week, so I won’t have the time to edit as much. On the plus side, as always, a lot more to post when I’ll come back 🙂
On another note: I tried tumblr again and will try to post other photos on there, often times maybe the same. Feel free to check it out, but it still has to be filled with content. To the tumblr.
Cheers, Khitos
KHITOS 