Ayup! Yesterday, while on a photography adventure in London, I did little other than revisit past/known locations. The same buildings, the same compositions, the same treasure-filled areas. This was mainly down to time restraints, but I do this in one way or another in every city I visit.
Instead of coming back with similar images each time, though, something undeniably magical happens. New angles, better weather, different gear, improved skills and fresh eyes all contribute towards an enhanced perspective.
Photography is a game of determination and consistency. The more you get to know a location, the more opportunities that will present themselves. Motivation is a well-known barrier for many folks. Often this is due to lack of interest in heading out to somewhere you’ve already been. A note to my future self; just go again.
The earth is a constantly changing and dynamic entity, that means you’ll almost certainly get a different image if you go to the exact same spot and photograph it again. There are even projects that show the same location photographed every day, with the intent of showing subtle changes. You don’t need to go every day, of course, but you might take a shot of the location in the snow, and one in the sun.
Fresh new opportunities
A million things can alter in one single spot from one week to the next. As photographers, it’s our duty to investigate and capture these changes. While it may seem counterintuitive to visit the same place in consecutive weeks or months, it’s rarely a waste of time.
Having made a start on editing yesterday’s photos, some of them are what I’d consider my best work so far. Despite there not being anything new to see, I’d refined the vision of how I wanted to capture certain scenes. Ultimately, this directed the flow and direction of the day.
A couple of the photos are extremely similar compositions to my iPhone shots captured a few years back. These were both images I was super happy with, but I knew they could be better. Fast-forward to the present day with a different camera, lens and focal length, and progress is most definitely evident.
In addition to being more perceptive of the stories around you, revisiting the same location is a great way to learn more about the steps that help to build a story.
Plan, shoot, edit, repeat
Of course, in an ideal world, us photographers would love nothing more than continually ticking off the destination bucket list. In the real world, however, we sometimes have to make do with what we’ve got.
If this means revisiting cities, parks or mountains that are easy to get to, then we have a golden opportunity. In fact, it’s an opportunity with one distinct advantage. You know the area. The best spots and compositions are already on your radar. There’s possibility.
Put yourself in the playing field, then put yourself there again. It might not always work out, but you’d be surprised how many times it does.
Waiting for exceptional light is the obvious benefit of revisiting the same location, but more importantly it sets you up for accelerated growth. The fastest way to grow as a photographer is to learn from your personal failures through a retrospective: identify the issue, hypothesize changes that would have prevented the issue, and test those changes under similar circumstances.