For reasons I don’t necessarily want to discuss here and now, I haven’t had a chance to play with my DSLR as much as I would like to over the past several months. Yes, there has been the occasional iPhone shot, but there haven’t been many opportunities to play with different lenses, long exposures and all the other functionality we take for granted when we enjoy our DSLRs. Yes, taking pictures is fun regardless of what tool you use, but I sometimes missed the ability to take a shot in very dark conditions or with a different depth of field.
Until my recent holiday, that is. At last, after months of photographic celibacy I was able to go wild and enjoy my camera again. I even schlepped three different lenses with me in a naive belief that I would use all of them all the time. (I did, to a degree.)
And what joy it was to go on walking tours of small Greek island villages with my Canon to photograph anything and anyone. I was like a puppy whose owner has just come back home to feed him – salivating at every photo opportunity and behaving as if that was my first time holding a DSLR. I refrained from humping it, I hasten to add.
This is such a nice feeling – being able to find joy in photographing even the most mundane of objects. I remember when Scott Bourne once mentioned how he admired Rick Sammon’s ability to enjoy everything he photographs. If my memory serves me right, Bourne’s implicit point was this: routine can kill the passion.
For me it was rather a case of absence making the heart grow fonder.
So here I was, happily snapping away in the scorching Greek sun. No complicated shots, nothing too strenuous, ambitious or challenging.
There were the ferry shots to remind me why I love travelling out of season:
– fellow passengers seemed to be pretty excited about the journey too:
Then there were the obligatory “oh-remember-the-sunsets” shots:
and the omnipresent white and blue Cycladic churches and chapels:
All pretty standard, sometimes dull and mostly taken to remember a particular place or moment. But I swear, I haven’t had so much pleasure taking random pictures in a long while. I partly blame it on the fact this was my first holiday after many very long and very stressful months, so I guess having the opportunity to take pictures without worrying about the world was simply therapeutic.
Although I did try to experiment with my camera a little again, most of the images I took were just very private holiday snaps. With no intention other than to remember (and now share) all those simple, but always flavoursome meals we had:
and the nice and warm people who served them
and the little bastards who were all too keen to share those meals with us:
Unless they just thought I was an oversized, salivating puppy and simply couldn’t stop gawking.
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