The Camera Is How You See, Not What You Came to Prove

There is a version of travel photography that most people know. You arrive at a viewpoint and find the angle that matches the image you have already seen online. Then you take the same photograph that ten thousand other people took from the same spot this year. Someone may like it online or many people may like it online. But the photograph did not teach you anything about the place, and the place did not show you anything it has not already shown to everyone else.

There is another version, and it is the one that makes photography a genuine way of traveling. It starts with walking. The camera becomes a reason to look more carefully, and looking carefully changes how long you stay anywhere. You notice what is happening at the edge of a street or you wait out the light because it is doing something you did not expect it to.

Scott Monaco photographs the same way on assignment as on an independent trip. The approach is to engage locally, stay present in the surroundings, and let being comfortable in a place produce the shots. There is no production team or shot list. Travelers can borrow the same approach anywhere, because it costs nothing and works with any camera.

Photography does not require expertise to change how you travel. A phone is enough. What matters is the shift in attention to notice what is going on around you or to stop in one place long enough for things to happen. Once you start looking this way, you see more of every place you visit, whether or not you take the shot.

Stories from Scott Monaco

In Photograph Your Way Through Hong Kong, guest contributor Manson Yim shares eight of his favorite locations and explains exactly how to shoot each one. It is the kind of guide only someone who has spent years photographing the same streets could write and these are not the shots that everyone else has.

In Mandy Sham‘s photo essay Sí, Con Todo, she photographs Mexico City at street level, framing the taco stands and market stalls where the food is inseparable from the neighborhood that produces it, while bringing you alongside.

While in Bonus Day in Brighton, a cancelled flight at Gatwick hands Scott Monaco twenty-four unplanned hours, and the result is a humorous walk through England’s strangest seaside town with a camera along. The essay won a Silver Solas Award for Humor in Travel Writing.

Contributors Who Write From Experience

The platform seeks contributors who know a place deeply — whether they grew up there, live there now, or spent enough years to understand how it works. Photo essays are welcome. If that describes you, the submission guidelines are on this site.

From the Field

A Few Destinations Worth Building A Photography Trip Around

Street photography in Accra, Ghana — Jamestown, the oldest district in the city, keeps its fishing fleet on the beach below a colonial-era lighthouse, and daily life in the neighborhood happens in the open. The Chale Wote street art festival each August is also a great time to visit.

The Namib Desert, Namibia — Sossusvlei and Deadvlei are the most photographed landscapes in the country, but the Skeleton Coast and the rock formations of Damaraland cover the same scale with far fewer people. Driving between them, you will pass through some of the emptiest country on earth.

Stone Town of Zanzibar, Tanzania — The old quarter is a dense grid of coral-stone buildings known for its carved wooden doors, and it holds UNESCO World Heritage status. The dhow harbor and the nightly food market at Forodhani Gardens give photographers subjects at both ends of the day.

Monsoon-season India — The standard advice is to stay away during the rains. However, the rain clears the haze and turns the country a shade of green that dry-season photographs cannot capture, and the crowds thin out for months.

The Pamir Highway, Tajikistan — One of the highest road trips on earth follows the Panj River along the Afghan border and through the Wakhan Corridor. The route delivers high-altitude landscape photography for days on end, with Silk Road forts and hot springs as the stops in between.

Hanoi’s Old Quarter, Vietnam — The city is at its best for street photography in the first two hours after sunrise, when vendors set up along the tube houses, and Hoan Kiem Lake fills with people exercising.

Dark sky photography in the Atacama Desert, Chile — Among the driest and least light-polluted places on earth, where the Milky Way is visible to the naked eye and serious astrophotography is possible with basic equipment. The daytime landscape of salt flats and high-altitude geysers holds its own against the night sky.

Street photography in Havana, Cuba — Vintage American cars still work as taxis against colonial facades in every state of repair, and the visual texture of the city has no equivalent in the Caribbean. The Malecón seawall draws the whole city out at sunset.

Mount Yasur on Tanna Island, Vanuatu — One of the most accessible active volcanoes in the world lets visitors stand at the crater rim at dusk where photographers can shoot the eruptions against the last light.

Where To Go Next

New stories from Scott Monaco are published weekly.

If photography is driving your next trip, tell Scott Monaco where you want to shoot.

More Ways to Travel

Explore how Scott Monaco travels: Food & Cuisine · Safari & Birding · Cultural Immersion · Photography · Cycling & Hiking · Solo Travel · Art & Artisan Craft · Books & Bookstores — or see all Ways to Travel.