There are exceptions, but I believe it's true that someone who lives in a place comes to know it better than a traveler who's passing through. The resident's advantage is time: weeks and months into years devoted to discovering, at their pace, the character of the place. The short hours a visitor spends there may yield surprises, if they're lucky, but little depth.
I'm reminded of this whenever I browse a bookstore on my travels, because their calendar racks are invariably awash in a cascade of beautiful photographs of the local area, the kind I didn't shoot because the weather was awful, or it was the wrong season, or the weather was too good (no clouds). My efforts, next to all this glossy work, seem pitiful (I don't buy the calendars: who needs a constant reminder?).
A case in point is photographer Lisa Wareham. She lives in Butte, Montana, which you know from previous postings I recently visited. Just when I was starting to feel satisfied with the photos I'd taken there I stumbled on Lisa's Web site…go there and see for yourself how one photographer (who's lived in Butte for twelve years) gets immersed in a place and eventually, with time and hard work, produces an insightful and interesting body of work (the photos with this post are hers.)
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