Chrisonomicon

Monday, January 6, 2003

Tourists . You don't want to be caught dead looking like one (now for more practical reasons, in addition to haute couture) and yet it's virtually impossible not to if you want to have any sort of physical keepsake of your travels since people simply don't take pictures of where they live. As a resident of a beautiful city and state surrounded by natural beauty and picturesque landmarks, visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, I know this.

Dan Taylor is the creator of Project: Shutterbug, an online gallery of tourists snapping photos, submitted by both Taylor and viewers of his site ( here's my submission). While picture quality and content is widely varied, there are a few gems (like here and here) that really capture the somewhat risible, bizarre nature of photography. Although I've never been a huge fan of taking pictures for posterity or any other reason (mainly because I'm not very good at it), I like this idea. In addition to the Mirror Project, this is a great way to take advantage of old material you may have taken for granted (such as mirrors or your tourist-trap homebase) and spark some photographic creativity with a theme.