How I Became a Photo Tourist in My Own Hometown
As a photographer you tend to seek the unknown, the exciting, the foreign. My Instagram profile is full of travel shots from all across Europe. I’ve been on roadtrips in Austria, England, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Switzerland and have already started to plan my next trips to France, Spain and the Balkans.
While I found beauty in all these foreign lands, I struggled to capture it in the place I live. Nuremberg is a medieval city in Bavaria and its Imperial Castle was once the most important castle in the Holy Roman Empire. Nuremberg’s old town is seeded with half-timbered houses, cobbled roads and medieval structures. It’s hard to believe that one cannot find this place photogenic, right?
I grew up just outside the city in a small village and spent most of my teenager years commuting to Nuremberg. At the age of 22 I finally moved to Nuremberg and started a master’s program at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. I’m 32 years old now and during all these years I didn’t find the key to taking great photos in this beautiful city.
It was only when I started to upload my photos to one of the big stock photography sites where one photo I took back in the days at Lake Eibsee got very popular. The photo showed my girlfriend’s hand, holding her phone to take a picture of the gorgeous mountains behind the lake. It opened my eyes. I realised I was looking at the world through my own eyes but I had to change perspective to find beauty in the known.
I started to look at my hometown through the eyes of the many tourists that are taking photos of the main sights such as the Church of St. Lawrence, the birthplace of the famous Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, the Imperial Castle or the colourful folk festival at the former Nazi party rally grounds. Suddenly, I could capture the beauty of this place but not only that. I rediscover the city anew every time I keep my eyes wide open when strolling through the narrow roads of Nuremberg’s old town.
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