As I write this post I can’t help but feel some biblical overtones in the title. I can’t wrap my head around it but I swear I’ve heard something similar before…maybe in a Cecil B. Demille movie?
At any rate it’s so important to know what it is you’re shooting, why you’re shooting it, and if the viewer will understand it…that is if you care if anyone besides you sees it.
I don’t know about you but for me I don’t take pictures just for my own gratification. I also take pictures to make people happy, smile, ponder, wonder, etc., or in the old days as a photo-journalist, to make people mad enough to get involved.
I write this particular post on this particular subject bcause of three scenarios that happened in my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” and also my less structured springtime photo tours (with daily reviews) that I conduct all over the place.
First, in my online class, I recently did a video critique of a student’s photo that was submitted for a lesson on ways to create depth. There were just random objects/points of interest, none of which made any sense as how they related to one another.
When I asked what was her subject she didn’t know. In fact she couldn’t remember why she even did what she did. She was merely trying to follow the lesson by trying to anchor a subject in the foreground (using a wide angle lens) to create layers of interest, thus depth; there was no subject or even a dominant center of interest.
Another time that I distinctly remember was in one of my trips to Cuba with the Santa Fe Workshops. I was walking behind two photographers that were taking pictures of anything and everything that moved or that they walked by.
They were basically taking pictures just to be taking pictures with no thought process behind any of them. I stopped them and ask to see what they had been shooting, and after going through them on the back of their cameras I asked what subjects they were trying to show, as far as going back home with anything memorably that portrayed Cuba…being the overall subject. Several of their photos could have been shot anywhere so why bother spending time and money coming all the way to Cuba?
Just recently I was with a group in my springtime in Berlin trip and during the daily reviews a women posted a shot of people on the other side of a store’s doorway. It was taken as she walked by without stopping to think about who they were, what were they doing, and what kind of store it was. When I asked her about it she said that there really wasn’t much of a subject and she really didn’t want to stop and spend any time with it…YIKES!
My way of thinking is that if you’re going to raise your camera up to your eye, then you should be willing to spend some time making sure you’re creating the best photo you can with a subject that the viewer will understand…but that’s jut me.
FYI, as long as the subject is known to a particular viewer, it can be somewhat esoteric. In the above photo the subject was safety, and although it’s a strong graphic photo, unless you were a stockholder in this company and read the annual report, you would’t know what the subject was.
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
