I think most photo bloggers, or bloggers for that matter have this desire to “be there first”.  To photograph, to eat at, to visit, to talk about something first, before anyone else has.  If you’re not first, then you risk being dismissed when your audience says to themselves “been there, done that”.

That’s how I felt when I was shooting in the Distillery District a couple of months ago.  I know for a fact that other photobloggers have shot there and produced some amazing photos.  So when I took my opportunity to visit, I was excited, yet nervous.  I went with a main purpose of photographing, it was what I was downtown to do (other than meet up with a friend later in the day), but I wasn’t sure what I’d be photographing.  I knew that many photographers had been there, so my challenge it seemed was to make photographs which were unique, distinct, had their own merit and weren’t just retakes of shots I had seen previously.  It was hard, because my first impressions were through photos, so I was constantly scanning the area trying to align what I saw with what I had seen previously.    This is the challenge when photographing landmarks or distinct objects.  How do you make the image your own, and not just a reproduction?  It was tough, the fact that there had been others there before me almost kept me from going there to shoot.  But I did got, and despite the rain, I did take some photos (a few have already appeared on fuzzification.com).  I don’t know if I succeeded but I at least came away with some photos I liked enough to keep and share.

My lesson from this experience: “Even though a place, or object may have been visited and photographed, take the challenge of visiting and photographing it anyways, just for the hell of it, you might just get something you like”