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How disappointing, there’s me thinking the Eilean Donan castle was in the middle of a rugged wilderness of Scottish landscape, soaring eagles and the faint sound of bagpipes. But when I arrived there as a young picture researcher on my first foray to the Highlands I was left ever so slightly let down. It was much smaller than I’d thought and had a very ugly car park and chip shop a kilted Highlander’s stones throw from the crumbling relic. Very very disappointing.

You feel let down when you hear stories of other places that fail to live up to expectations. The commercial hell of the pyramids of Giza, which you’d been led to believe was amid a vast deserted desert, the commercial sprawl around Niagara or the crushing disappointment that Stonehenge is tiny and absolutely not in a remote clearing in a druid-filled forest. Bravo to the photographers and advertisers who hoodwinked us so successfully.

Travel photography has traditionally been designed to show the world in a sanitised idealistic light. Every beach looked clean, every city looked romantic and all those street cafes were busy but not too busy! This is the world we were sold, but more and more now we know the reality. Our window on the world is getting larger, wider and it’s now very easy to look over your shoulder and round the next corner.

We can now enjoy crowded car parks, rows upon rows of street vendors, industrial wastelands and  slums adjacent to some of the world’s most iconic landmarks and monuments.

Photographer and telling it how it is and other studies have used a to place recognised locations in a greater context.

So why this shift in showing the stark reality of travel? It’s probably down to a combination of factors

• Technology: the work of sites like has used 360 degree technology to throw a new perspective onto clichéd panoramas.
• It’s quite literally all around us: we’ve all used Google street view to check out a prospective hotel or home, ‘oh it’s next to a giant glue factory, thanks for not mentioning that‘.
• Travel has moved on: it’s not just about the obvious destinations – we want ‘warts-and-all’ travel, the reality may not put us off, in fact it may make for a more immersive experience.
• User generated content: proliferating on sites such as has also led to reality led travel choices.

So is this bad news for photographers? Far from it. We embrace the documenting of the world, we want every angle, every viewpoint, images that show magnificence and images that have cultural and social comment. There’s always something new and you can keep on top of trends on this blog.

We are no longer shielded from reality only to find it wasn’t quite how it was depicted ‘in the brochure’.

Photographers also have a great opportunity and a monumentally exciting challenge. Carry on shooting the beauty and majesty of our planet but also find the corners of the world that haven’t yet been widely documented. That castle in Scotland was a disappointment but we continue to be left open mouthed by great travel  photography and will continue to enjoy the reality and the depiction of our beautiful and fascinating planet.