I grew up in Singapore, yet the country I return to after a year abroad in Cambridge feels different. Stores change hands, the weather feels hotter, and the people seem different. My friends insist that nothing much has changed. Perhaps it is me that has changed. Having spent two years in Cambridge, I come back home after every academic year with new perspectives gathered from my long hiatus from this heat, which I spend the whole summer struggling to adapt to.

“The effect, I think, of having a camera and the desire to justify its purchase, is an ambition to find beauty”

During my time in Cambridge, I purchased a camera and picked up photography as a hobby to document some memorable moments from my time abroad, exploring some of the most beautiful (and not-so beautiful) sides of Europe. Now that my new camera and I are back home, I wonder if, in trying to capture beauty in a photograph, the camera forces one to look at its target in a new light.

Amid the hustle and bustle of Singapore City, the urge is incessant to always build up. “We are running out of space,” I am told, yet the construction site is a ubiquitous feature of the city, as new structures are always being raised. As I walk down a street, reeling from the sweltering heat, I become suddenly struck by the sight of cranes jutting out from behind the tall metal boards that cordon off construction sites. Their vibrant colours are well illuminated by the sun. I reach into my bag and spend the next few minutes trying to get a photograph, convinced that a good shot is somewhere to be found. The people passing by stare at me. They question my sanity as I suffer under the hot sun, just to capture a photo of something that has long been a common sight in Singaporean life.

Now as I look back at this picture, I wonder what it is about these cranes that had caught my attention. Was it their impressive size? The way they seemed to snake across the sky? Or was it the array of colours they displayed, a metal rainbow for the onlookers below? I must have felt that there was something beautiful to be found in these structures, crude and temporary as they are. The effect, I think, of having a camera and the desire to justify its purchase, is an ambition to find beauty, or even create it. As a child, too poor to afford a good camera, I am certain I would have walked hastily past this scene, judging the weird guy, snapping away at nothing.

“Standing alongside sweaty expats and tourists with their own cameras, I wonder how they see my country … I wonder if they regret the flight ticket”

Yet, now that I am a tourist in my own city, I come to appreciate its beauty and its culture. I come to seek it out. I wander past buildings and streets that I would have happily ignored as a child, and I head to the cultural sights to finally see what all the fuss is about. The shophouse is an icon of Singapore, a building of particular architectural distinction (or so I am told). To me, it had always been just a shophouse. I read online that it is a blend of Chinese and Western influences. I look at the intricate designs that adorn its walls and wonder what is Chinese and what is Western. I snap a photo.

Standing alongside sweaty expats and tourists with their own cameras, I wonder how they see my country. Having had the fortune to see some truly spectacular landscapes in Europe, I wonder if they would be bored in this concrete jungle. I wonder if they regret the flight ticket. Yet it is as a ‘tourist’, an outsider, armed with a camera, that I have come to appreciate the beautiful and the vibrant in this city. Before, this country had been boring to me, a place I had sought to escape. Maybe I am just a bad Singaporean. Perhaps my countrymen are not as oblivious to Singapore’s charms as I had been. Nonetheless, having returned with my camera, I am newly convinced that there is beauty to be found here.