Behind the landmark

Every city comes with a list. The tower, the cathedral, the viewpoint everyone reaches at sunset. I usually go, and I usually take the picture. It is almost never the one I keep.

The list tells you where to go. It does not tell you what to look at, and it sends everyone to the same spot at the same hour, so everyone comes home with the same photograph.

The landmark, from somewhere else

Big Ben is on this site, but not the way it is on postcards. The tower sits behind the Union flag, and the foreground is dark leaves from a tree I was standing under.

The Theatinerkirche in Munich is usually photographed straight on from Odeonsplatz. Mine is taken over a hedge buried in snow, with only the yellow towers and the dark domes above it.

Theatinerkirche in Snow, Munich.

The places that aren’t on the list

Some of the photographs I like most were made in places no list would send you. A wooden boathouse on a still lake in Ed, a small town in Sweden. A junction in Chiang Mai at night, where a scooter waits under street lights and a tangle of cables. Nothing famous is in that frame, and it doesn’t need anything to be.

What works for me is simple:

• Walk without a route. Pick a direction and follow the light.
• Go early or late, when a place belongs to the people who live there.
• Go back to the same corner twice. The second time I see it properly.

Where it adds up

After more than 31 countries, the list matters less every year. I still visit the tower. But the photographs on this site are mostly what I found on the way there, and the Atlas shows where that was.