For various reasons – among others chickenpox (the boy) and a twisted ankle (me) – the summer holidays have been spent in familiar surroundings, at home in Oslo and out at the farm. This has me thinking – yet again – about the link between novelty and inspiration.
Many personal favourites of my own work have been taken abroad.
Venice, before I even had a DSLR. 
Whitby, England. 
Whitby, England. On medium format film with a Lomography Diana. 
Portsmouth, England. 35 mm film with the Minolta.
But the question is of course why I like these so much. Likely the answer is in the nature of travel: when your surroundings are new and unknown, you are wide open to everything around you, everything seems interesting to photograph and every experience intense. The resulting images retain memories of this intensity.
The key question then is this: how to make the familiar and known equally inspiring to photograph? My best advice here is to photograph the same subject many times, in different seasons and with different cameras and from different angles. I didn’t do this deliberately at first, but after a while I have come to realise how inspiring this is, and how much the same subject in a photograph can change depending on the season, the world around it, your medium and your mood.
Summer, Minolta with black and white film 
Winter, Olympus, digital
Fog, Samsung S7 
Sun, Polaroid Spectra Silver Shade
Summer, Polaroid 600, early Impossible Project film 
Winter, Minolta, black and white film
~ All the best from Jenny Graver.
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I so agree about revisiting those familiar places. It’s amazing what you can see when you are intentional and take the time. I really love the photos of that house in different seasons. So special!