Holiday pictures

Last June we were on holiday in Slovenia and Croatia – countries blessed with beautiful mountains, romantic towns at the seaside, narrow streets cheered up with colorful laundry, gorgeous beaches, quiet islands, suffused with endless sunlight and topped by day-in-day-out blue skies. The latter is of course, from the perspective of the average tourist, certainly not a punishment, seen the extensive period of rain we had since last winter. However, for me as a photographer this all together almost ensures a boringly ‘perfect’ mix of postcard-topics with the harshest contrasts you can imagine. Especially knowing that shortly after me the herds will come in, taking the very same pictures by the millions – this really challenges you to make something special out of this. Indeed, I could say goodbye to photography for the time being – or to the concept of ‘holiday’ as this is really hard work (not really). I chose for the latter.

To give it a go, we gave ourselves occasionally challenges and assignments to move us off the beaten track – themes like “the end of tourism”, “scars of war, “the lost village” or “big and small”. Themes that surprisingly offered us fun and some good material as well. Also, holidays give you the opportunity to do things in photography that usually take more effort, like playing with night photography or long exposure photography. After all, you are located already in the midst of that medieval village, or your tent happens to be just a few feet away from that jetty at the seaside, making it really easy to go out, interrupt your book and glass of wine and do you thing with tripod and release cable.

But you could also try to look through different eyes – changing quasi your retina. So put on your virtual photographic sun glasses (=filters) and change the way your experience light and colors. Back & white, of course, is the first thing that pops up. Thinking in b&w mode learns you to see differently, and different things. But what about polaroid, glass negatives, infrared, pinhole? And how about bleach bypass and solarisation? Not necessarily by changing your camera, or using 'real' filters. In the end, it’s holiday, why carrying all that old stuff? Just think about the capabilities of your image editing software (e.g., NIK Color Efex Pro) – that also includes filters like that or allows you to create your own 'recipes', emulating old photographic and dark room techniques. I am sure many serious photographers appall just by the idea, but why? If the chosen filter/recipe appeals to the feeling, the idea you got when you took the picture, and in particular if you are able to tweak and embed the filter well to make the result really yours, then suddenly you have, besides the default digital color ‘film’ (and black & white conversion) a range of other virtual cameras in your pocket. Allowing you to look around, experience and capture the world around you differently, merely through your inner eye. Then that abandoned village quietly bathing in the sun, apparently waiting for the people to return shortly, suddenly gets something eerie or magical. Those "scars of war" then really take you back to the battle of the cruel Post-Yugoslavian conflict.

Obviously, that takes more than just a tick in the software box – it requires phantasy/empathy at the moment of experience, imagination of how the end result should look like (to represent the inner image) – and requiring in turn understanding of the capabilities of your toolbox of possible filters and tweaks and how to apply them. It requires that you indeed free yourself of what your eyes can see – and to look inside at what unfolds in your imagination. How different is that from turning an image into black & white, something we all accept?

In that way our vacation eventually resulted in quite some interesting material – while giving fun too. Shortly to be seen on my website!