Kinda funny, since decades ago when I worked in advertising I would occasionally have to take (usually PR-related) portraits of customers. I swore I’d never, ever, EVER do that again unless compelled. I thoroughly detest shooting people (well, other than a few troublesome customers and then not with a cam… Oops, better not go there! 
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I’ve spent the last several years trying my best to silently drop off the radar of my church in regard to photos… I’m glad to help, but I’d rather dig ditches!
Toronto is big enough that I’m sure I could find a club specializing in any niche area of photography. Having said that, I have never gone out shooting with another photographer, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I can unplug from urban life and shoot what I want, where I want, at the time and pace I want.
People are absolutely the last thing I want to photograph, to the extent that if that was all there was to shoot I’d just take a pass on photography.
My wife and daughter came out with me once last fall (really, we went out to see some fall colors and I brought my camera; it wasn’t that they knowingly came on a photo hike with me). I stopped for about 15 minutes to shoot some bracket fungus inside a stump, and when I caught up to them, my wife says “Where were you, Ansel, we thought something had happened to you!” Ummm…
That’s why I’m a ‘street photographer.’ 
We need to swap locations.
It’s interesting. I don’t live in a truly urban environment and I do value my (non-existant) privacy. I’d love to live out in the middle of the rural countryside. But that said, I spend 95% of my time alone – for one reason or another – and I would actually enjoy some company from like-minded folks if there’s a common interest / activity.
Same here. For me personally, portrait photography == no photography. I actually have very few family photos. None staged / formal at all. The others are mostly glowering faces who didn’t want their pictures taken. So I stopped years ago. Beside, it’s not like any of us are models or anything. 
I’ve never asked but I don’t think my wife knows who “Ansel” was… Maybe I’m wrong. My daughter? Well, she has an art degree (like me) so she might remember, but photography wasn’t her area…
I was totally stunned when my wife came out with that, and then I almost looked over my shoulder to see if AP was lurking. She likes taking photos around the house (with her tablet), but she’s never shown any interest in really digging into photography.
I find these discussions very interesting, I like to know where others live and how they practice the hobby of photography. Personally, I don’t like photographing people or macro photography. I am lucky enough to live in an area of Italy where I can reach the seaside, the mountains, some lakes but also cities of art in 2 hours. The main problem is often laziness and secondly lack of time. I hope the translator made the text understandable.
Greetings. Roberto
For comparison…
From my house, I can reach the Gulf of Mexico in about 3 hours driving time. It’s a large, swampy, flat coastline that’s not really amenable to photography for the most part. About five hours and I can reach some sandy tourist beaches, but still the same Gulf. No cliffs, sea stacks, etc., as it’s an alluvial / delta shoreline.
I guess the nearest city with anything “photographable” in nature would be New Orleans, which is 4-5 hours drive time (depending on traffic). But it’s kinda meh IMO.
Mountains? Five to six hours north to the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains in Arkansas with 2800 ft (850m) summits above ~1200 ft (365m) surrounding land, so we’re talking about 1600 ft (490m) elevation change at most, usually less. The lower foothills of the Appalachians to the east (the Carolinas) and the Davis Mountains in west Texas are both 10-16 hours drive time in opposite directions.
Lakes? Not much beyond the scale of local dammed streams making little fishing reservoirs.
Perfectly.
I’ve never done it, but I can imagine it could go like that. I sometimes watch photographers on YouTube and when they go with their “pro” friends, it looks like a lot of fun, and they all seem to want to do similar things. But in reality, unless you’re really good friends, I can imagine it might get a bit awkward.
Last night I got motivated and looked for local photography clubs. There looks to be a couple of them. I’ll try them out sometime and I’ll try to keep an open mind. But I’m definitely not sold on the idea yet. I’ve been doing it as a solo pastime for so long that I can’t really imagine having someone else there. But I need someone who I can push closer to the bear when it attacks while I run away, so I’ll definitely try finding a hiking “partner” one day
Like they say, “you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your friend.” I remember a TV commercial several years ago where one camper squirted honey all over the other one and ran off when a bear appeared. 
Other than one very small workshop I attended (three of us including the host) I’ve never done that, but I’d like to. Two days following the workshop I went around the same area, revisited the sites we hit, plus a few others. I thoroughly enjoyed it … particularly the aspect that as I huffed, puffed, wheezed, panted and frequently rested (on what should be easy trails for any normal person) there were no other workshop attendees to witness my flabbiosity… But mostly it made me feel almost legit, like maybe there was a faint hope I could someday become a Real Photographer ™. Maybe. Someday. If I live long enough and don’t die somewhere on a kiddie trail…
interesting, I think both the final product and the process of taking portraits is 100x more interesting than landscape photography, and I love camping and the outdoors, and architecture for that matter. Still lifes would be worth getting into however.
I think I agree with you on shooting with other photographers though, I don’t see any appeal in that whatsoever.
I’m starting to think I need a photo buddy. If you’re around Southern California, let me know.
I guess for me it’s mostly the rather icky and unpleasant process of having to work directly with a model. Maybe it’s because to my eye pretty much any landscape I can find is light years higher on the quality scale than any model I could ever work with (not to mention my ability to make the most of either). And I won’t even mention the prospect of “looking them in the face” for hours as I edit their shots… 
But also there’s the question of why. I ultimately see no purpose in shooting portraiture, at least of anyone not ‘connected’ to my life. Purely for documentation, maybe… but anonymous portraiture, no reason.
But of course, that’s all highly personal and specific to me just as others’ views are to themselves. Different strokes and all that.
I’m hoping to do exactly that later this year: do a workshop and then spend a couple of days afterward, two or three time zones west of home so the early mornings don’t kill me.
Would that be BC?
working with models is a completely different discipline to portraiture as far as I’m concerned.
portraiture is about capturing a genuine impression of a real person - glamour, fashion, and other forms of commercial photography where models are involved are concerned with something quite a bit simpler, and far less satisfying.
the beauty of portraiture is in trying to go beyond skin deep, and that even the seemingly most boring of boring people are still human.
I understand why someone wouldn’t be interested in going out and doing it, but as to the question of why, I mean we’re all a part of the human story and I simply think there’s something intrinsically compelling about that. To link that back to photography I’ll share a quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson who said this:
As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It’s a trace.
Good chance that it would be. I have my eyes on a few workshops there, as well as a couple in Alberta.
That makes sense. However to apply it to myself I try to see it from the other side, as it were, and that’s where it falls apart. I find it impossible to imagine anything intrinsically interesting about me, not to mention anything I could consciously bring to the table above and beyond that. At that point, imposter syndrome kicks in like a tsunami: If I don’t qualify as a subject, how can I ever be a photographer (in that context)?
It’s a relationship not completely unlike that between a doctor and patient, actor and audience or a teacher and learner… One provides while the other receives and benefits. I don’t see myself up to ‘providing’ at that level. Then again, the same thing could be said between a landscape and a photographer – Was Ansel greater than the landscape? Dunno – How do you quantify and measure that?
And as I mentioned the anonymous factor also comes into play for me. Quite often after a while, a photo (or at least my appreciation of it) “wanes” in my eye. The same thing happened to the stuff I created when I was in university as an art major. Other than whatever someone else hung onto there’s hardly a single “work” I kept unless it was overlooked at throwing-away time. It was all eventually trashed because there was no value (left). However, for me personally the physical landscape* is at a different level, “beyond reproach” so to speak, so a good image of it never fades.
Again, all very specific and individual. Maybe if I could come to a point of liking to shoot people I might feel different, but it’s just very uncomfortable for me.
* An actual good landscape, that is
