Hello ,
As I was making a photograph recently, someone who knows me asked if I was out looking for pictures.
Unless I've got an assignment, I'm never
out looking for specific pictures/compositions.
And in my way of thinking about my photography, there's "looking" for pictures or "seeing" pictures as they seem to come out of nowhere spontaneously.
It's these spontaneous pictures that seem to "find me" instead of me "looking" for them and "finding" them.
And even with an assignment, unless I'm working with an art director who wants me to work from their preconceived ideas, I think it's a bad move to have preconceived notions of the final photograph and start looking for "the picture."
We can keep the intent of the photograph in mind, but not a specific picture that fulfills the intent.
For example, if I gave the assignment to study and practice with the effects of shutter speed, the photographs produced during the assignment would intend to show how shutter speed affects the recording of things that are moving.
I'd recommend working with fast and slow shutter speeds and photographing different things that moved
at different speeds.
The idea is to become visually aware of everything that moves and begin to make correlations between how fast something is moving and what shutter speed will record the motion of that object as static, not blurred.
If I gave the assignment to photograph a specific thing, like people walking, you'd
miss the opportunities to study and practice with all the other things that move.
The point is as soon we "pre-create" "the picture" in our mind that fulfills the intent, we "look" for "the picture" that meets that intent.
When we do that, we put blinders on, limiting our visual awareness to all the other possibilities that'll satisfy the
assignment's intent more uniquely and creatively.
In other words, we're too busy "looking" for "THE picture" instead of "seeing" the pictures that find us as they arise.
Of course, I'm talking about how I work, and I imagine many of us do, a photojournalistic approach to photography.
If ya wanna call it documentary photography, street photography, event photography, candids, or whatever, It's stuff (moments) we can't predict.
And, if we can't predict it, why do we predict what "the picture" is gonna look like?
Crazy, ain't it?
I did that at one point in my professional work.
And because I was looking for "the picture," I failed to see all the better ones that would've found me.
And, If I did see them, I discouraged myself from making them because I figured the editor wanted "the picture" I was looking for instead of the pictures
that found me.
But let me be clear: the work I was producing for this particular publication did the job but was visually mediocre.
On the other hand, I considered the pictures that found me too offbeat for the publication.
Those pictures would've done the job,
too, but they were just visually offbeat, and I imagined they'd be unacceptable.
But one day, I made "the pictures" that I thought the editor was looking for, and out of a sense of wanting to make pictures that excited me again, I also made pictures that "found me" on the same roll of film.
After the film was developed and viewed, the editor
reamed me out for the visual inconsistency in the assignment and even questioned whether the offbeat work was mine.
And then she warned me not ever to pull that again.
I wasn't sure what she meant.
Was she talking about the work I wanted to do or the mediocre
slop I've been serving up for them?
And I guess it showed in my face.
In so many words, the editor continued by saying she only wanted to see the offbeat work she saw that day.
And she added that the other stuff was shyt in comparison and would more likely wind
up at the bottom of a bird cage instead of the "like wall" of an editor's office.
Here's the thing.
Whether we have an assignment or not doesn't matter.
Because if we have no preconception of "the picture" in our head, we approach our work with an open mind and a
way of seeing that is uniquely our own.
And because of that, we don't have to look for anything.
Stuff to photograph shows up.
In other words, our pictures find us.
And
remember, we learn and improve by doing, so practice making at least one picture today.
That’s all for now; thanks for reading!
Sam
I'll help you be a better photographer—study and practice photography with me.
And, if the timing doesn't work for you in my scheduled group classes?
Then, we can schedule a one-time lesson or a series of in-person or online private instruction that covers the same things as the group classes.
Ways to work with me are listed below.
