My first overseas trip combining travel and photography came in the summer
of 1973, when I was one year out of high school. My uncle was the president
of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, and all his nephews got to work on a
Merchant Marine ship over one summer in their lives. When it was my turn I worked
in the kitchen on the ship and traveled to Scandinavia, England, and Ireland.
I'd bought a Minolta SR-T 101, and over that summer I fell in love with
travel and with photography. I look back at that experience as the root of who
I am today.
|
All
Photos © 2005, Jack Hollingsworth, All Rights Reserved
|
|
What I remember most vividly, though, is coming home. After three months we
came up the Cape Cod Canal, heading for Bourne, Massachusetts. I can remember
the feeling I had, standing on deck. I'd been away almost three months,
had seen Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, London, and Dublin, but what I was
seeing and feeling then was the most beautiful experience of the trip. It's
obvious why I felt that way--I was a teen-ager who missed his home and
his family. But there was something else, too: I felt that visually there was
no place like home. I had 90 days of shooting in what was for me pretty exotic
territory, and yet as I was looking at the trees and the water, the sky and
the clouds, I saw them in a way I'd never seen them before, even though
I was born on Cape Cod.
So in addition to a love of photography and a love of travel, some other things
were born that summer: a love of coming home and an appreciation of the visual
beauty of things I often take for granted. Some 32 years later, I have the same
love of travel and photography I had back then, and no matter if I'm returning
from St. Petersburg, Hong Kong, Beijing, or Tokyo, I've got the same visual
appreciation for my own backyard.
You may find that hard to believe. I go to a lot of exotic locations, so you'd
think my own backyard would be no big deal. Well, yes and no. Home doesn't
have the same electricity I feel when I get off the plane in an exotic place;
it doesn't have that emotional sensation. But it's just as visually
stimulating. The photographs here are ones I took on Cape Cod--our home
is in Chatham, Massachusetts--and I took them with the same care, attention,
and sense of discovery I bring to any photo I take anywhere. (And I took them
with the same mixed bag of camera gear I'd use for my travels: Nikon F4
and F100, Canon EOS-1Ds and EOS-1Ds Mark II. I like zooms on the Nikons--the
28-80mm and the 80-200mm, particularly--and primes on the Canons--the
50mm, 85mm, 135mm, and 200mm.)
Article Contents
