Henry David Thoreau once said, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”.
This is a quote I memorized thirty years ago when while I was doing some personal research on his essay entitled Civil Disobedience. It struck me as something I had been doing all along in my photography, as I always went out looking for new ways to say the same thing; not for anyone else’s edification but my own. As long as I was able sleep at night knowing I did everything possible to make the best photo I could, that’s what mattered most.
Been there shot that
In my online class with the BPSOP, and with my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, I tell my students that what’s so important in taking their photos what I refer to as “Up a Notch” is to “see past first impressions”, or in other words, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”.
So how does the phrase “been there shot that” relate to this post? It’s a phrase I’ve heard photographers say when they thought there wasn’t much of a point in going back to the same place since they had already been there and shot all there was to shoot. Or investing any more of their time taking pictures of the same subject because it was boring. Some might call it boring, but then again some might call it being lazy.
Do you want to know what the epitome of boring is? Shooting oil rigs and Pumpjacks…now you’re talking boring!!! You couldn’t be a corporate photographer in the eighties and nineties without shooting for companies that dealt somehow in the oilfield industry; that is if you wanted to earn a living as a photographer. If you did want photography to be your day job you shot oil rigs and Pumpjacks and smiled the whole time.
Every time I got a call to shoot an annual report for an oil company I always made it sound as if I was excited to get to shoot their oil rigs or Pumpjacks. Truth be told, it’s just about as boring as it got. Sure it was exciting in the beginning, but how many ways can you shoot an oil rig or a Pumpjack over the course of a fifty-year career???
This is where I tell you to remember that “it’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”. If you’ve been there and shot that, go back and shoot it again. All you have to do is to work with the elements of visual design and composition found on my ‘Artist Palette’ and “Stretch Your Frame of Mind”!
As Marcel Proust said, “The only real voyage of discovery is not in discovering new landscapes, but in having new eyes”. Challenge yourself…couldn’t hurt!!!
Here are just a few examples showing years of shooting oil rigs and Pumpjacks:
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
