Does photography as a tourist takes way from the moment? Sure, but
I love capturing the little moments of daily life that happen at street level as I’m wandering around a city, whether it’s a new one an ocean away or my own neighborhood in San Francisco. These are very different from the photos of the Eiffel Tower that every visitor to Paris has somewhere in their phone camera, different from the ones you’ll find on travel guides or city government websites. You can’t easily find the pictures I want on Google Images… The only alternative is to capture them myself.
This reminded me of my own little online rabbit-hole-ing on Google Maps. For some reason, I like looking at places that are at edges, no matter where they are in the world. The most northern or southern points of a country. Borders between countries. Coasts. Foothills.
I zoom in and out, switch from vanilla view to satellite view. Having gotten my fill of the topography, I tap on Photos to sample that experience from the point of view of people, people I’ll never meet and know nothing about.
It’s not only that those are some of the only public photos from those places, but also that they’re photos from everymen and women. They’re unfocused, unfiltered, poorly framed, repeated, obscured by the photographer themself. Regardless, they’re the best – the only – expression of what it’s actually like to be there.
I have worn out hours and whole iPhone battery cycles on these tours. They wouldn’t seem as real as they do, were it not for the casual, unthinking contributions of thousands of fellow humans.