China Photo Tour Tips
Editor Robert Keeley got the chance to tour China as an advisor for a group of photography enthusiasts. He brought home his tips for shooting in a country filled with photo opportunities.
There are 1.34 billion people in China and at any given moment quite a few of them are likely to be in the picture you’re about to take! The most surprising element to me about shooting in China was how open to photography the population was - not only in taking their own photos, but also in becoming subjects. With so many people, and so many tourists (both western and local), it was almost inevitable that more often than not they would appear in your images - whether you wanted them to or not! But there was an even more intriguing aspect to this. More than once as we travelled about this vast country, when we stopped to take photos of people, not only was it tolerated or welcomed (even when photographing children), we were then asked about reciprocal rights - people wanted to know if we’d pose in their photos too! In China, the citizens seem to love photography - and it doesn’t seem to matter which side of the camera they’re on.
This was just one of the interesting aspects of undertaking a photographic tour in the world’s most populated country.
This story was first published in the Australian Photography + Digital February 2013 issue.
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