|  David Schroeder
"Local Knowledge"
Sometimes, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn. Most articles on travel photography contain the suggestion that it’s useful to do some research on your intended destination, before you go, to be better prepared for the type of photo opportunities you might encounter and to know what equipment to pack. Common suggestions for this type of research include consulting: guidebooks, travel agents, your local library, and online sites such as: www.fodors.com or www.travelphotographers.net. Once you’ve arrived at your location, it’s possible to augment your pre-journey research with local knowledge that’s available through visitor bureaus, chambers of commerce, tour guides, going on excursions, and even checking out postcards in the local stores to see what types of photos others have taken. With this type of information it’s possible to plan your daily itinerary with photography in mind, taking into account the weather, the time of day, and local events that lend themselves to dramatic, memorable images.  In the real world of travel photography, however, things seldom go as planned and it’s not always possible to know in advance what’s going to happen or where the good photos will be. Several years ago, my wife and I flew to Viet Nam to attend our son’s hastily planned wedding. The scheduled events left a few days free in the middle of the week and my son suggested that we fly to Siem Riep, Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, one of the “wonders of the world” that I’d always said I wanted to visit – “someday.” I had brought most of my camera equipment but had been preparing to only take a few candid wedding pictures and some “tourist” shots around Saigon. I hadn’t given any thought, or done any planning, with regard to going on a major photographic adventure in a foreign country. (Has that ever stopped any of us from going, anyway?)
I had a few pictures in my mind of what Angkor Wat would look like (a large temple) but I was totally unprepared for the size of the site. I quickly discovered that Angkor Wat is just the primary temple in the Angkor region, which measures over 400 square miles and has over 1,000 temples, many of them just piles of rubble. Angkor has been determined to be the largest pre-industrial city in the world. Just visiting the restored sites requires lots of time (days) and lots of walking (miles). My sandals disintegrated after the second day of continuous walking and my memories of the experience always include the facts that it was HOT! and that my camera equipment was HEAVY! I also discovered I hadn’t brought enough memory cards and that there were only a few places in the region that could transfer my RAW files to CD’s. Finding those places took hours from the limited time we had. (Compact, external hard drives hadn’t been developed yet and I hadn’t brought my laptop.) Would a little pre-travel planning have helped??  Photographically, I was in a blur. After shooting the iconic shots of Angkor Wat, proper, I wasn’t sure where to go or how to proceed. Luckily, my son had been to the site before and had some ideas. We also hired a taxi driver/guide who had his suggestions, as well. But the incident which gave focus to the whole adventure occurred unexpectedly.
On my second day of shooting, while I was setting up my tripod for a shot of the inner courtyard of Ta Prohm, a temple left un-recovered from its’ jungle cocoon, a young Cambodian man approached and said, politely, “Perhaps if you moved your tripod to the top of that rubble pile (pointing), you would have a better view of the courtyard.” He was right. I thanked him, gave him a small tip and prepared to move on. He then suggested, again politely, that he might be able to show me more places to take good pictures. I was hesitant and my photographers’ ego felt challenged, but I decided I could risk a few suggestions – besides, none of my photo buddies were watching. As the young man took me from spot to spot, it was obvious that he had some  knowledge as to what would make a good photo. After a series of successful recommendations, I asked the young man if he were a photographer himself. He said no. I then asked how he knew where to look for the best pictures. I expected him to say that he’d been watching other tourists take pictures at the temple. Instead, he said that this temple was the site used for many scenes in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and he had watched their camermen set up their shots. He thought they must know what they were doing. When I finished laughing, and assured my polite friend that I hadn’t been laughing at him, I let him guide me in the footsteps of the giants who had come before me. As might be expected, some of the best shots from my Angkor adventure were from that afternoon at Ta Prohm. As a result of that trip, I realized that if I were going to take travel photography seriously, I would have to spend a bit more time on preparation and planning. I also realized that if I wanted to bring home unique images from my adventures, I would have to stay open to the gentile, and sometimes polite, nudgings from the creative universe. |
