On Photography Part III: Interesting Things

Now we are delving into the meat of this thing. Photography is about interesting things.

Now I wish I could quit right there, but unfortunately that isn’t the end of the story. Interesting things are EVERYWHERE. I’m sure there is some photographer out there who could make a drop-dead amazing shot of the bowl of oranges in front me on on the kitchen table. I’m not that photographer. Because photography is a search for personal vision, that vision is heavily dictated by what we, as individuals, find interesting.

But the best photographers (and I most certainly do NOT include myself in that category) are capable of drawing out the interest in the most mundane of subjects. They are capable of finding, or just as often, creating something compelling. Learning how to see those interesting things in the depths of the mundane is a skill that I try to work on constantly. I think about how I would make an image, even if I never actually take the shot, of even the most boring of subjects. My bowl of oranges for instance.

A photographer I met once said “People are always asking me how I take such great wildlife shots. I tell them it’s because I go where the wildlife is.”

True I suppose, but, in my opinion, a wild cop-out. Sure, its damn hard to take photos of penguins when you aren’t in a penguin colony, but does visiting a penguin colony suddenly make you a world-class wildlife photographer? Hell no. But learn how to make a stunning image of a Chickadee or a squirrel in your backyard, and you’ll have my respect. It isn’t the subject, it’s the image.

So think about your images. Think about how to make the subject the most compelling you possibly can. You don’t even have to make the image, just let your creativity wander.

Maybe if I hit that bowl of oranges with a hammer, I’d get something cool…

In the next post I’ll conclude this rambling diatribe. Check back.

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