Do You Need to Travel Far Away to Take Meaningful Photos?

This impromptu photo project was meant to reflect on one question — Do you need to travel far away to take meaningful photos? Please read on and find my answer.

Keith Chen
6 min readNov 8, 2021
Photo by author. Shot in Pittsburgh.

I love to travel and take photos from different cities. The novelty of new places and the surprises I often encounter are what make those photo-taking experiences exciting and unique every single time. However, after visiting and taking photos from 50 plus cities around the world, all of a sudden I asked myself — What would happen if I approach my own city, which is just an ordinary mid-size city in the U.S., with the same enthusiasm and energy? With that question in mind, I decided to do an impromptu photo shooting in the city I live in — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on a hot summer day in 2019.

In this story, I will use three questions — Why, What, and How — to guide you through this photo shooting experience and share some of the photos I took along the way.

Photo by author. Shot in Pittsburgh.

(1) — Why?

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Keith Chen

Product manager @ Google.com, ex-Amazon; Adjunct professor @ MICA.edu and Chatham.edu; MBA from CMU.edu; Professional photographer. Language : 中文 / EN