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| Google (1) images search of 'Beach holiday postcards' |
I think this seems to be the case for most holiday postcards. As shown above, most beachfront tourist holiday spots all have pictures of the beach highlighting the yellow sands and clear waters with the location spread across the front. You have the more involved postcards that have more than one pictures, all at kooky angles, usually showing the same beach image but you also may also have some 'tourist attractions', if the location has any, included. For example, a waterpark shot or a go kart track. Then you have the ones you purchase in your hotel gift shop that again, will have the beach images or even just a pure shot of the hotel that you are staying in.
While these images do actually convey the holiday destination, they are designed to give you the most idealistic views of the location, to try to seduce the receiver into wanting to visit this location/hotel. In my experience of buying postcards, I find some of the beach/sunset images that are on the front could well actually be anywhere in the world! Unless I found the exact spot in which that photo was taken, I don't think I could guarantee that they aren't. So it's the same as receiving theses postcards. As enticing as that serene beach sunset would call to my sunset-photograph-taking self, it wouldn't actually encourage me to go there. Again goes for the touristy images. That could sway me a bit more if I was looking for somewhere that was near to the beach but also had things to entertain the children, but I couldn't say that it would sell that destination for me singlehandedly.
The sole purpose of a postcard is to attract the people receiving them to a destination or as a souvenir for someone who has been to that destination. However, in my experience, the postcard will bear no relation to my holiday experience at all.
I can completely understand Graham Clarke's comments but I'm not sure if I agree or not at this stage. I think that when we take landscape photographs we are, in effect, explorers. We explore the places that we are visiting, much like a tourist, and then document it by taking the photograph, again, much like a tourist. So we are actually creating our own postcards but relating them to our experience of that trip. But for the most part, we aren't actually tourists, are we? Especially in areas that we are familiar with. Well yes, maybe we are. Even in our own towns, taking photos of landscapes we know inside out, we are still experimenting and exploring different ways and views of documenting that landscape. So in regards to the question, no, I don't think we can 'not' be a tourist or an outsider as the photographer. Even as we take these landscape photographs, we are still taking them with the 'viewer' in mind so are creating these 'postcard' images to be enjoyed by ourselves or even someone else. When we look at the beach image that I took a few posts back, this could well be seen as a picturesque postcard image for this area. So these photographs that we take could always be seen as tourist images or postcards, highlighting a particular area of beauty within a location, which could then attempt to encourage the viewer to want to visit that area.
I have recently been looking through magazines in preparation for a future exercise and have come across a few adverts that exactly highlight the point of the postcard view.
This advert is for a pub not too far from here, it explains how close it is to "breathtaking views" and includes a photo of a beautiful sunset (again, which could be anywhere) alongside a picture of the pub itself, taken in glorious weather with everyone sat outside in the beer garden. But the reality of it is that living in Wales, the likelyhood of you being able to visit with the weather allowing you to sit outside or being anywhere near being able to witness a sunset like that from the pus itself is highly unlikely.
1) https://www.google.co.uk/
2) Around Town Magazine, April 2014 Edition, P59 (www.aroundtownwales.co.uk)
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