I Don’t Enjoy Famous Photo Spots Anymore

I used to love famous photo spots.

If there was a location that photographers kept talking about, I wanted to see it for myself. I’d save it on a map, make plans to visit, and sometimes even travel across the city just to photograph it.

And to be fair, most of those places are popular for a reason.

The view is usually great. The light works well. The compositions almost create themselves. But over time, I started enjoying those places less.

Part of it is because everyone already knows exactly what photo they’re there to take. You arrive and see people standing in the same position, pointing their cameras in the same direction, waiting for the same shot they’ve already seen online a hundred times.

I’ve done it too.

You take the photo, check the screen, and realise it looks almost exactly like every other version you’ve seen before.

That’s when I started asking myself a question.

Was I photographing the place because I genuinely found it interesting, or because I wanted to recreate a photo I already knew existed?

These days, I get more excited about the places that aren’t on any photography list.

A random alley. A quiet neighbourhood. A street I’ve never walked down before. There’s no pressure to capture a specific shot because nobody has told you what the photo is supposed to look like.

Maybe that’s what I miss about photography when I first started. In Slow Shutter, everything felt undiscovered. Not because the places were new, but because they were new to me.

I still visit famous photo spots from time to time.

I just don’t find them as interesting as the places nobody is talking about yet.