‘Exoticising’ Home

We can forget that our familiarities are another’s novelty. As we go through our routine journeys we can overlook the beautiful things we pass through, or perhaps we never saw anything beautiful in the first place. We look at Nat Geo’s incredible shots of faraway places and wistfully discount our own homes as providers of such stunning photography (and lets not even begin to consider the talent and top of the range gear behind such shots).

Ability and equipment aside, though, perhaps we just need to look a little harder – or through the eyes of a newcomer. I wonder what the reaction of the farmer of the rice field in China would be when they saw a photo of a block of high rise flats, a glass building, or a line of Victorian terraces? Are they fascinating? Beautiful? Exotic, even?

I have decided to explore my current home town – Buckingham, England – with my camera today (it’s typically cool and cloudy). I want to defamiliarise myself with it, to see it through a fresh pair of eyes and look hard for those curious details I have passed over so many times before. Despite such romanticising, I am still sceptical about what I will capture (can Buckingham really hold its own?), and secretly wish I was elsewhere. But I remember that every journey begins in Buckingham for me, and I’m not just talking about travel :)

Welcome, one and all, to my new photography blog; a place to express and share musings, discoveries and adventures from behind the lens. Oh, and maybe the odd photo! I am a photographer/writer based in Buckingham, I love and have begun to specialise in street/travel photography and portraits. There is so much creativity and talent here online, and I look forward to hopefully being a part of it.

So let the journey begin…