The Landscapist nails it
10th February 2007
In response to my post about my frustration with my photography, Mark Hobson, a.k.a The Landscapist, neatly summed up my problem:
Creating Art is an emotional, not an intellectual, act.
And he provided a way to start working on it:
Get your hands on a point-and-shoot, set it on Auto, take it everywhere you go, and just take pictures of anything that catches your eye.
I’ve heard this advice, or variations on it, several times in the past, notably from Ben Lifson. But it never quite sunk in. People would say: just shoot anything you see that interests you. Carry a camera around all the time.
But when I filtered what they said through my brain, I added an assumption: that I should try to make good photos of whatever interests me. So I would dutifully carry a camera around and, seeing something, would stop, try to frame it, think about the light, think about the composition, think, and think, and think. And then I would go home and expect to see successful photos. And, of course, I would be disappointed.
But the key is to eliminate all that thinking mess. And eliminate any expectations that these photos should be “good” or presentable. The important thing, I realize, is to act: take photos of anything that interests me. There’s tremendous value in that alone. And then I can look at what I have shot and, in each photo, ask myself why I took the photo. I believe this act of photographing without thinking and without any expectations of the results, and then reviewing what I have shot, will be the start of something wonderful.
I’ve been doing that for a couple of days now. I have to admit that it’s a whole lot harder than I thought it would be. I almost had to grit my teeth to take those first few shots. But I’m already beginning to notice things about my visual interests that I had been vaguely aware of before — things that I like to look at and would like to photograph but resisted because I didn’t think it would be an interesting photograph. I hope to teach myself to take photos of things that actually interest me as opposed to those things that my intellect says ought to interest me, or those things that interest other people. And once I recognize what I’m interested in, and have convinced myself to take those pictures, I can go to work on making good pictures of those things, whatever “good” may mean.
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