Although a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes a subject of a photo shoot is so vast that it is difficult to decide what to start with. This is often the case with travel photography, as every country’s story can be told in many different ways: through its architecture, food, people, arts, etc.
To overcome the initial block created by the vastness of the subject, I find it productive to pick a specific element, such as an iconic building or even and try to cover it deeply. The term “study” that is sometime used to describe some of the classical works of art ( e.g. “a study in scarlet”) comes to mind. When I start my photography in a new place with a study of a small element of that location, I free up the bandwidth of my mind from the necessity of making decisions about the subjects of the photos (i.e. what to shoot, at what time of day, etc.) This is very valuable at the initial stage, as I can focus on learning more about the particular subject I have already chosen. It might not be the single most perfect subject representing the country or location, but it always offers opportunities for learning about its larger context, so the other subjects for follow-up photo shoots emerge naturally.
Josh Waitzkin
, an international-level chess player and a martial artist, who studies learning processes, refers to this strategy of focussing on small details as “creating small circles.” Interestingly enough, his inspiration for this approach came from the book that I am currently reading – Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values.” In this book, there is a scene where the main character helps a student to overcome a creative block by changing her assignment from writing about a town to writing about a detail of a building in that town: “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”
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