David did a recent post where he quoted Minor White saying in in a letter to his father, Philip Hyde, that at the time he was “…photographing anything that got in the way.” David wondered if others photographed in the same manner or not. I replied that no, I didn’t really do it that way, but that’s only about half true.
Unless for some reason you specialize in a tight niche, I think it’s good to experiment with different subjects, to expand your seeing in different ways. Even as a specialist that would be good to do now and then. For a photographer of any stripe it’s good to free up your vision, to explore new avenues of creativity. That’s how you grow as an artist.
My own approach is really very simple. While I don’t necessarily photograph anything and everything around me, anything might grab me at any given time and trigger the response to photograph it. The important thing to me is connection. It’s more of an intuitive response than it is a logical one.
When something stops me in my tracks, grabs me in the gut, I’ll explore the possibilities. It’s something outside of me speaking and connecting with something inside of me — similar to the idea of equivalents espoused by Stieglitz and Adams and Minor White among others. Maybe it’s the same thing they were talking about. Regardless of what the subject is, to me that gut level connection is where art comes from, it’s the difference between a truly expressive piece of work and a snapshot.
That’s the way I work — I seek an emotional and visceral connection to the subject. Only then will I work on making a photograph of it. You no doubt work differently, we all do, which is good. The important thing is to find your own unique way of working. What’s yours?
Answering me isn’t the important thing. Answering that for yourself is — but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
