MAGAN'S WORLD:NONE OF US likes to think of ourself as one of those tourists for whom photographing is merely a Pavlovian response, a conditioned reaction to being on holiday, like browsing in craft shops or sending postcards. We prefer to notice in others the Möbius-strip-like tendency to take photographs because one has a camera with one, and having a camera with one only because it is one of the things one takes on holidays.
My colleague Rosita Boland wrote last month about never travelling with a camera. “I don’t have a single picture of any of the 50-plus countries in seven continents that I’ve travelled to over almost nine years,” she admitted – or perhaps boasted. The tone of the article was reflective, with just a touch of aloofness, a distancing from the snap-happy hoards.
Her subeditor widened the discourse with a subheading that asked: “In a world obsessed with seeing everything through a lens, isn’t it enough to simply live in the moment?”
It’s true that we are all increasingly prone to putting a screen between us and the world, but I felt an urge to hand Rosita a camera and send her out to see what she’s missing. Perhaps it’s the zeal of the recent convert.
For years I would have shared her outlook. I never carried a camera with me until Go’s editor cajoled me into buying one. (I had occasionally been followed by a TV crew, but that’s another matter.)
I was certain nothing could ever surpass my journal as a way of documenting what I saw, felt and thought on my travels, and it was with some reluctance that I took the camera with me to La Gomera, in the Canaries, last spring. But all reservations dissipated on my first morning walking around the island, as I found the camera opening my eyes to a new way of seeing the world, heightening my awareness, the way travelling with someone passionate about art history, or architecture or geography, can open you to new horizons.
It made for a wonderful holiday, delving now and then into my bag to dig out the camera and capture a transient moment – the sudden interplay of light, a pleasing palette of tones, a well-framed scene. The impulse to snap seemed to be instinctive. I could trace no obvious thought process; something inside would suddenly want to capture the moment.
Ever since, I’ve always brought my little Canon away with me, and although I don’t take many pictures I like the fact that my eye is always on the lookout for a moment of well-lit perfection.
But the question then arises of what to do with all those photographs. Flickr will accept them, but as it already has four billion images it hardly needs any more. Yet now a venerable institution dedicated to travel has announced that is seeking our photographs. After more than 100 years of exploring “the world and all that is in it”, the National Geographic Society has put out a call for photographs. It has set up a community website, at natgeoadventure.tv, “to inspire as many people as possible in as many countries as possible to become adventurers”.
It wants us to share our travel ideas, experiences, photographs and videos with each other, and aims to use the site as a hunting ground for future photographers, film-makers and reporters who share the intrepid, open-minded sense of adventure that it has always stood for. It will pay to use any photographs or videos that it likes, and it will offer regular prizes for work it deems exceptional.
Definitely better than having your old snaps mouldering in a drawer.