post turkey day breakfast* ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
post turkey dinner ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
"To know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting...." ~ Dorothea Lange
"It’s about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organising them...." ~ Elliott Erwitt
I HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO RESOLVE AN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION OF WHY so many-the majority?-"serious" amateur picture makers seem to be unable to break out of the mold of making pictures that replicate what they have been told are good pictures.
Is it a lack of imagination? Creativity? A predisposition to "follow the leader", aka: "what I spoda do massa?" (that is, the "masters" of landscape / portraiture / et al). Or is it, quite simply, fear? The fear of being seen as "different" / non-conforming.
Add to the aforementioned, the idea of "visualization" (often refered to as pre-visualization. A concept promoted by Sir Ansel who wrote:
"Visualization is a conscious process of projecting the final photographic image in the mind before taking the first steps in actually photographing the subject....one of the most important concepts in photography.
iMo, visualization is the single most causal factor in the killing of creativity / responding to what you see without thinking. A process (without thinking) which, again iMo, results in pictures which surprise even their makers. Consider the words of Garry Winogrand:
“I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.”
That idea is a big part of my over-arching approach to how I make pictures cuz there is nothing I enjoy more than being surprised by a picture I have made. For me, that is the Joy of Photography.
* breakfast at the newly installed retro breakfast nook in the Hobson household.