I have a photography/blogger friend who thinks that you should always admit when a photograph:
is exactly what you visualize / is nothing like what you visualize.
Said photographer believes that this would begin to separate the people who essentially paint light onto a negative with mechanical means, knowing their instrument's potential and its nuances, from the people who randomly shoot what they intuit as interesting and are 99% surprised at what shows up in a print.
I spent (spend) a lot of time learning about the mechanisms of photography, from inside the metal body of the camera to paperweight and lens filters for printing. And because of that I have to spend even more time forgetting things the moment I pick up a camera. You can't let what you know be what you make. Of course, it's more fun to not make work in total darkness (for long), but the reason people love 'Found Photos' is because the anonymous photographers are not shooting with their learned tools - they're shooting with their hands, their eyes, their whatever else it is that says Release the Shutter Now.
 |
| Knew / Could Not Have Known / Was Mistaken / Mystified |
Plus, I say that every photo falls between Purpose & Accident. Never one side or the other.
2 comments:
By that classification, I would fall decidedly on the rarely-knows-what-will-come-out side. It's hard to even imagine having to /try/ to forget, when I'm constantly working to understand what's going on between the shutter release and the print image. Choosing what to share feels like the only real power I have in the whole process.
Having you comment on my blog (and with compliments!) is a huge thrill for me, so thank you, and I will definitely check out Melancholia.
Choosing what to share is maybe the only place I feel utter chaos, the choice given to my momentary fingers only. But, yeah, we're referencing the same moment from the same side of the fence. One of us happens to be a little to one side is all.
And, honestly, yours is one of the three or four blogs I look at once a week or so. I love what you photograph almost as much as what you write/say. And what's underneath it all -- oh!
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