HERE AND HERE
Idon’t about you, but as I’ve got older, photography has become more and more about external stimuli – travel, events and, of course, testing camera bodies and lenses. Given my job, the latter is understandable, but overall it’s meant that my photography has come to rely on a motivation beyond simply taking photographs for the sake of it. It also means that I’ve started overlooking the potential picture opportunities that are right under my nose… the everyday things that happen at home or in the immediate vicinity.
Not being able to travel internationally (or even interstate in some cases) and the cancellation of any event that’s involved a decent crowd has forced me – and, I’m sure, numerous other photographers – to take another look at our immediate surrounds and what it has to offer photographically. Already, there have been some very interesting projects documenting various aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic around the world. For example, the transformation of once bustling locations such as airports, train stations and shopping malls into eerily deserted locations. Quite a number of photographers around the world have created portfolios of ‘lockdown portraits’ – people photographed behind their windows while they were confined to their homes – or they’ve concentrated on showing how family life has changed because of the restrictions on so many activities that we once just took for granted. And it’s when you’re forced to take a closer look at what’s around you that you start to notice what you’ve been missing or may even dismiss as mundane or ordinary. It could be as simple as the play of light on an object or the graphic patterns created when you decide to crop in tighter, but the more you start seeing – rather than just looking – the more you’ll find there are pictures to be had. Often they’ll be what I once saw described – in reference to landscape paintings – as “small still pictures”, and it’s a reminder that every photograph we take doesn’t have to be an all-singing, all-dancing award winner. It can be a simple study that relies on the photographic skills of framing, composition, focus (i.e. depth-of-field) and exposure to quietly tell its story. Overworked or oversaturated or just over-the-top seems to have become the new normal in image-making, but great photography is really all about intuition, intention and intimacy.
A few years ago National Geographic photographer Jim Brandenburg described how he spend the 93 days of spring taking a photograph a day in his home state of Minnesota. He elected to take each picture at noon, and take only one frame, as he says “simply and minimally”.
“In life and photography, a closer look at the familiar can often reveal truth and beauty… some of the most revealing photographs are of the places we know best. When you shoot an area you know in your bones, as I do of the North Woods and prairies of Minnesota, it touches on something primal. Familiarity and intimate knowledge of the subject come to light and manifest themselves in the frame.”
Perhaps, most significantly though, he adds, “But spontaneity was the standard”. In other words, simply pick up your camera, start looking around you and respond instinctively to whatever you see… curiosity, emotion humour, happiness, melancholy… whatever. Then it’s a case of applying all your photographic skills to help make this moment understandable for the viewer, so they will at least catch a glimpse of what you’ve been imagining and feeling. It doesn’t have to be obvious. It can be subtle or a suggestion, as one very successful photographer once told me, “A photograph should always ask a question”.The element of mystery is a powerful one in cinema and literature, and it can also make a photograph far more intriguing, stimulating the viewer’s own imagination.
But while it’s rewarding to have your creative endeavours recognised by others, this isn’t necessarily the main objective here. These pictures can be entirely for your own satisfaction and enjoyment, records of personal moments that you can choose to share or simply keep to yourself as recollections of a particular time and place. There are no rules. Shoot simply for the sake of shooting or set more defined objectives. It doesn’t matter… that’s the sheer beauty of photography as a medium for personal expression, introspection or celebration. And never underestimate the potential power of the small still picture.