Doing the Gig

Do you have a favorite place you like to visit to do photography; a place you go again and again? One of my favorites is downtown Gig Harbor. There are views of Mount Rainier, picturesque boats, parks, and scenic streets. I don’t know how many times I’ve shot there, but since I use to live in on the Gig Harbor peninsula (and still live only a short drive away), I have photographed the Harbor many times.

One of the challenges of shooting the same place multiple times is getting something fresh. Besides the scenery, shooting in Gig Harbor helps me work on thinking outside my normal box. Since I’ve photographed the same scenes multiple times, it forces me to try to find new points of view for the same scenes. It presents good exercise for the most important component of photography – your mind.

Shooting the same location again and again also allows to work on variations on a theme. Again, this is a very good mental exercise for a photographer. While I suggest working a scene, shooting a wide number of variations (as I discussed in this previous post), by returning multiple times, you can add the fourth dimension, time, to your variations.

For these reasons (and because it was a photo outing with the Mountaineers), I did the Gig one evening last week. The photos here are some of the results.

Do you have your own Gig? Where is your favorite place you like to return to again and again, and why do you return?