Travel Photography

I have travelled to Bristol today to see the Travel Photographer of the Year exhibition which launched outside the Royal Photographic Society headquarters.  This is one of my favourite exhibitions, I guess because I particularly enjoy travel photography myself.

In the evening there was a presentation by Chris Coe, the founder of the competition.  He described the origins of the competition, the way it has changed over its 21 years, the organisation, the funding, the judging, the publicity, etc, and included a number of the wonderful images from over the years.

There was also an interesting (and unresolved) discussion about the definition of "travel photography".  For the RPS it centres around "a sense of place".  Chris Coe believes this is far too narrow a definition, and that travel photography includes everything you can see or experience when travelling.  Thus his competition includes portraits, landscapes, seascapes, wildlife, food, semi-abstract shots etc.

Tomorrow there is a series of talks around the subject of travel photography, all part of the  weekend events organised by the RPS Travel Group.