My friend Jeff Bobin wrote this in a comment tonight and I immediately knew what he meant. This week I have been pretty busy and pretty scattered with a couple future projects in the hopper and daily work which escalated a bit this past week. So at times I feel I reverted back to the old comfort zone photography instead of pushing myself to explore new ways of seeing the story. But during graduations in which I photographed 4 total I felt I did some standard --hey this will look cool stuff and some true exploration of the story within the story. I think what Jeff was referring to, at least this is how I believe what he said to be true, is I relied on a couple old photo tricks to make a picture have graphic appeal, or isolating a subject to get to the heart of the one-subject - one story idea.
That is what I did a lot of for years and have been trying to become more focussed on the less graphic, or less photo compositional standards and push the idea of what we see and still tell the story.
I study great photographers like the Turnley brothers, Robert Frank, Preston Gannaway to see how they use their cameras not so much as cameras, but their eyes. I sometimes purposely look through my viewfinder and make pictures that i think are not my composition at all and see what I come up with. I, of course, fail often in this approach , but am finding that by doing this I am seeing new compositions I didn't know existed. Mush like shooting with out looking through the camera at all.
Because these are graduation photos I was cognizant of the family wanting to get their photos and the last thing they want is me in their photos I reverted back to shooting with long glass(80-90% of my recent work has been with a standard 20mm lens.)
My behind the scenes images where I wouldn't be disruptive was with my wide angle.
The key to whatever approach I take is there needs to be a story within a story so that the layers of meaning engage the reader on some level beyond--'oh that's a nice picture of Joey!".
And it has to be real as if I wasn't there.
I think about Frank and Gangway a lot as they are simply brilliant at making it look like they weren't even there affecting the scene
We're luck to be living at time where we can study so many great photographers and learn how to better our own craft. And the wide variety of styles to try to weave into one. Craig Walker, Michael Williamson, Bruce Davidson, Salgado, Nachtwey, Eugene Richards....to look at their work and study is a true joy.
I'm very lucky to do what I do!
That is what I did a lot of for years and have been trying to become more focussed on the less graphic, or less photo compositional standards and push the idea of what we see and still tell the story.
I study great photographers like the Turnley brothers, Robert Frank, Preston Gannaway to see how they use their cameras not so much as cameras, but their eyes. I sometimes purposely look through my viewfinder and make pictures that i think are not my composition at all and see what I come up with. I, of course, fail often in this approach , but am finding that by doing this I am seeing new compositions I didn't know existed. Mush like shooting with out looking through the camera at all.
Because these are graduation photos I was cognizant of the family wanting to get their photos and the last thing they want is me in their photos I reverted back to shooting with long glass(80-90% of my recent work has been with a standard 20mm lens.)
My behind the scenes images where I wouldn't be disruptive was with my wide angle.
The key to whatever approach I take is there needs to be a story within a story so that the layers of meaning engage the reader on some level beyond--'oh that's a nice picture of Joey!".
And it has to be real as if I wasn't there.
I think about Frank and Gangway a lot as they are simply brilliant at making it look like they weren't even there affecting the scene
We're luck to be living at time where we can study so many great photographers and learn how to better our own craft. And the wide variety of styles to try to weave into one. Craig Walker, Michael Williamson, Bruce Davidson, Salgado, Nachtwey, Eugene Richards....to look at their work and study is a true joy.
I'm very lucky to do what I do!