The Photographer’s Eye

Sydney February 2013 (2 images)

Sometimes I like to wander around with camera in hand, in areas and along streets that I’ve walked hundreds of times before, but with the aim of seeing things anew, as if I were a tourist in the area for the first time. I find it helps to cultivate an appreciation for what might otherwise have been overlooked many times before. To help develop a photographer’s eye as it were. And so I found myself by the harbour (why must parking near the harbour be so expensive?) and taking a walk. I was looking around for things to photograph. It was a hot day and after a while I sat down and just watched the real tourists walking around taking their photos. I looked ahead. Do you see what I saw?

. . .

Exactly! Without exception the tourists I observed would walk up to the fence and shoot over it. So I got up and knelt down in front of that missing section of the fence for about 5 minutes, just playing with different lenses and focal points trying to get a different point of view of the Opera House. And a few months later on a whim, I checked some of my old photos from a few years ago taken around this area. Guess what! That missing fence section was there before and I never noticed it. Maybe I do have a bit of a photographer’s eye now.

I don’t usually join in The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge but since this week’s theme is about the unusual point-of-view, to be unusual, I thought I would. Kneeling in front of that fence, I guess the passers-by on that day probably thought that I was, ummm…. unusual. 🙂