WINDOWS ON WORLDS: Just point and shoot

 |   |  2 min read

WINDOWS ON WORLDS: Just point and shoot

I can't remember when I started doing it, but certainly in 1995 when I first went to Vietnam – the year after it opened itself to foreign tourists – I was taking a photo out the window of every room I stayed in.

On a few occasions there hasn't been a window – an underground backpackers in Stockholm, a death-trap dump in Taipei – and certainly there were some views which were unattractive: a brick wall in Sydney; the rubbish tips of other people's backyards in Japan; the parking lot of a motel in Louisiana; a suburban street is Seattle . . .

IMG_6350But every now and again I'd dump my bag, walk to the window and say “Wow!”.

None of the cameras I've used over the years were special in any way. There were those cheap yellow disposables, with a Polaroid, little things chosen because they were portable and fitted easily in a jacket pocket, latterly just a phone.

There have been photos from fales in Samoa; a view across Los Angeles from a famous Art Deco place; out of a portholes in Fiji and another somewhere between Auckland and New Caledonia; pictures from Spain, Italy, France, Britain, Sweden; dozens of places across the American south; cheap digs in New Zealand; desertscapes in the Australian Outback . . .

IMG_5265I don't know why I started doing this.

In the years before Facebook these weren't taken to be posted and announce “look where I am”, they were just taken for my pleasure and maybe to remind me in later years of places I'd been.

It has become a habit – and my eldest son who travels constantly for work has his own variant. In every room he sets his fancy camera to auto-delay and takes a photo of himself standing in a far corner.

Charlie Watts used to draw his hotel rooms, so my son is in good company.

Once I got this elsewhere website up and running I decided to devote a page to Windows on Elsewhere for my own reference and which very few visitors would even bother with.

3_victoria_canadaBut it is here for the curious, a few hundred photos out of windows in the past 25 years.

Why do I do this?


As Charles Foster Kane once said, “My reasons satisfy me”.

Click.

.

These entries are of little consequence to anyone other than me Graham Reid, the author of this site, and maybe my family, researchers and those with too much time on their hands.

Enjoy these random oddities at Personal Elsewhere.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Personal Elsewhere articles index

STRANGE CUSTOMS: Yep, packed it myself sir

STRANGE CUSTOMS: Yep, packed it myself sir

My father always used to say that, as far we know, we’re only here once so we might as well look around. And so I have -- with increasing urgency as I have become older. I call it cramming... > Read more

6B IN THE FRAME: And I'm never going back to my old school

6B IN THE FRAME: And I'm never going back to my old school

School photographs like this always remind me how much younger I was than my classmates. At the time this photo was taken I was 16, I didn't turn 17 until halfway through that year. Which means... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

EPS by Yasmin Brown

EPS by Yasmin Brown

With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column by the informed and opinionated Yasmin Brown. She will scoop up some of those many EP releases, in... > Read more

ELSEWHERE WORLD SERVICE: A quick overview of recent world music releases

ELSEWHERE WORLD SERVICE: A quick overview of recent world music releases

Here's a frequent flyer/transit lounge/vicarious listening music column for those at home who want to get their musical passport stamped. Elsewhere has so many CDs and downloads commanding and... > Read more