Why I Stopped Snapping Photographs
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August Heffner:
A few years ago, I stopped bringing a camera on vacation. It has been an amazing experiment and I haven’t regretted it once.
Taking a photograph of the Eiffel Tower, for example, seems ridiculous. There are millions of photos of the Eiffel tower…
I know this sounds heavy-handed but I encourage everyone to try it on their vacations. I’ve substituted photograph making (like a smoker would use chewing gum) with a notebook and pens. Every time I feel the urge to take a photograph, I pull out my notebook and draw the scene. I’ve learned a lot more about the places I’ve been and, in every country I’ve traveled to, this method usually created a mob of children around us in any public park. These interactions have been some of the best cultural travel experiences I’ve had, beating any and all museums in the world.
You don’t need Eiffel Tower photos. Or sunsets, or kids (other people’s). But what about the unique moments? And drawing them, too, just for good measure.
Bruce Davidson offers a reason to reconsider leaving that camera home though:
What’s great about looking at your work is the emotion comes back. The emotion comes back. The rhythm of what you were photographing comes back. It’s almost like a musical score. You can see where I may have quit too soon, or stayed too long. Or was bored and took a lot of pictures of nothing because I wanted to put film through the camera. All kinds of things are working when you’re looking at the contact sheet. Also, you see old girlfriends and friends and your children going up and my hairline receding.
