Travel – Delight

Without getting lost in the labyrinth of the traveller versus tourist dichotomy, there are many reasons for travel, from the utilitarian demands of business through experiences that broaden the mind to the packaged delivery to indulgent laziness on a sunny beach with a chilled glass to hand. Insofar as travel takes one away from the familiar comforts of home, all will provide some opportunities to experience new and different places.

What these experiences can all provide in varying degrees is delight. Delight in landscapes, buildings, people, tastes, smells, sounds and so on. The delight may be in something intrinsically beautiful or dramatic or something that achieves the effect through being different or surprising. Delight is subjective and personal: size doesn’t matter; nor does beauty, necessarily. The benefits of experiencing sheer delight, joy even, are not to be underestimated.

Where the delight is visual (still) photography can a brilliant medium for capturing that experience, but merely an inadequate prompt when it comes to the other senses. Where black and white photography is used the delights of colour are sacrificed for a more limited palate still capable of achieving both drama and subtlety. The dual nature of the photographic image is important: the subject as a source of delight; and the photograph as object, a source of delight in its own right.

I aim for my book to include photographs that try to embody the delight I have experienced.

Photo: Haveli, Jaisalmer, India, 2004

Photo: Fish landing, Stone Town, Zanzibar, 1999

Photo: Beagle Channel, Patagonia, 2009

Photo: Jerusalem Church, Bruges, Belgium, 2012

Photo: Dom, (Cathedral), Cologne, Germany, 2012

Photo:  Nissaki, Corfu, Greece

Photo: New York from Rockefeller Centre, 2011