It’s #TravelTuesday again! I’m Dave Williams and I’m here every week at ScottKelby.com, at your service!
Today I’m very tired! I’ve just returned from a tip to Norway where I travelled some 1,600 miles in just a few days, exploring the landscape and shooting some awesome sights. I was taking over the KelbyOne Instagram account while I was there and showing the lovely KelbyOne community what I was up to every step of the way. It’s from this that I’m taking inspiration for today’s post.
There’s an American photographer born 1898 in Germany, shooting and documenting World War II before becoming a staff photographer for Life Magazine. The reason I’m telling you this is because he once came out with a cracker of a line: –
“It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.”
So, when I was in Norway one of the locations on my bucket list was Kannasteinen, sometimes referred to by us English speakers as the mushroom rock, which appears to be a precariously balanced boulder atop a thin shaft on the coastline of Maløy. I had driven a very, very long way to get to this spot and get this shot: –
But it’s more about the experience I had whilst I was there that I laid down that quote. I wasn’t the only photographer at this incredibly remote location. I bumped into Espen who, like me, had just bought a Nikon Z6, and we got chatting (with his perfect English rather than my terrible Norwegian) and in the Instagram takeover I included a short video of the two of us chatting, explain the importance of making friends and the power of local knowledge in your research of photographing locations.
As well as discussing our cameras we swapped lenses to get more variety of shots, we talked about techniques and traded secrets, and we discussed other locations to shoot. Espen is from the Lofoten Islands way up in the north, which is an absolutely beautiful part of Norway, and he’d dragged his caravan all the way down some 400 miles to this rock. If there are any geologists reading this, by the way, I have some questions for you!
Well here’s the point: – When you’re researching and planning, it continues well into the trip until the point you actually leave. Plans need to be dynamic enough to adapt to the unexpected, but also they can be flexible enough that when you meet a local person (or any person for that matter) you can make a new friend and learn from one another, like Espen and I did while we waited for sunset at Kannesteinen.
There are ways to learn from one another in the KelbyOne community, both from the instructors and from other members, and plenty more ways to network and share our skills and experiences as well. To learn more about this, check out my new class on KelbyOne.com – How to Prepare For Your Travel Photography Adventure.
This week I’m off to France, so next week I’ll have more stories to share with you, and as always you can follow along on my social media.
Much love
Dave
