How do you stay away from a cliché if you only have a few days in any one place to take a photograph? The postcard pics are post card pics for a reason. They give you a sense of what a place looks and feels at its best. And they sell of course. But as a photographer, I have begun the difficult journey to stay away from these types of pics no matter how tempting they may be. (See Mesa Arch, Tunnel View, Hallstatt, antelope canyon etc.) I’m also looking for something someone or myself would like to hang on a wall. Greece is really one big cliché. Probably one of my most difficult self-assignments to stay away from the tripod holes left by everyone else, and of course the instagramers. Wow, they take it to a new level. Walking on the roofs of people’s homes wearing clothes that quite frankly are unflattering in order to get the same Instagram photo everyone else has from Santorini is taking it to a new level. Don’t even get me started on the wedding photos. Yet, I did find myself there at sunset and sunrise trying to get the same photo taken millions of times before me. (How else do you think I know about the instagramers, and wedding photographers?) Then, a painting caught my eye so I popped into an art gallery. To say the artist’s style was abstraction was an understatement…maybe abstraction with god like ability to paint light. The artist was in his 60’s and had painted Greece for the last 50 years of his life. He had seen far better sunsets than any instagramer, but yet choose to paint the simplest abstractions of light. I found his artwork calming and better yet, a way better representation of the feeling you get when you walk down a narrow passage through an old Greek town. Check him out here: http://www.ak-galleries.com/christoforos-asimis I found my new inspiration, and what I think is a much better representation of the beauty of Greece itself.
