Taking Notice : Paying Attention

Everyone is a photographer today and many are travelers as well. All photographers and travelers want to learn how to take better pictures. To have their images honored as well as their memories. Today, it is easy to get enthralled with the technology and tools of image making and in the process miss the opportunity to bring home great memories and great images. This collection of topical essays coupled with hundreds of color images explores the process seeing in new ways. Far from being a technical manual, it is an aid to discovering new topics hidden among the images we come home with. It is an aid to seeing where we are going as well as taking pictures of where we have been.

I have been a traveler all of my life and a photographer for most of it. I learned that taking pictures is different than what I thought it was. Returning from a trip, I often make presentations and the question most often asked by the audience is, "What kind of camera do you use." It is a rather logical question, but it misses the point entirely. Not only is the camera only a tool, it is often the tool that prevents you from being present. The real trick is to be present, to see well and to use the camera as a way to make your memory as precise as possible. We all would like to be told the magic trick that is going to make our photographs fabulous and garner applause. We dig through technical publications, only to discover that the tools we need to work with are not just cameras, but our eyes, our minds and hearts. This collection of topical essays coupled with hundreds of color images explores the process seeing in new ways. Far from being a technical manual, it is an aid to discovering new topics hidden among the images we come home with. It is an aid to seeing where we are going as well as taking pictures of where we have been.

Gary Dwyer is a travel photographer and book producer. He has worked in 47 countries. In 1992 He photographed the Botanical Survey Project on Baffin Island, Northwest Territories in the Canadian Arctic and in 1994 documented World Heritage Sites for UNESCO in Vietnam. While a Resident Artist at the American Academy in Rome in 2005, he photographed Architecture in Danger of Disappearing in Italy, for The World Monuments Fund. His work has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, the Oakland Museum in California and is in the collection of La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.