If I were the devil...

Man Smoking San Francisco China Town. Shot on an M10 with a new (at the time) 28mm Leica Lens.

I came across this thought exercise in "Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Wedding photography with Trevor Dayley" in the Beginner Photography Podcast. Here Trevor Dayley speaks to an article he wrote where he explores the delicacy of the photographer's confidence versus the need of a great deal of confidence to take a photograph.

While listening I began to realize the amount of ourselves we put into a photograph and in showing this to strangers, does indeed require a great deal of confidence because it is such a part of us. We all take pictures that we do not like, just as we admit that there are facets of us that we do not like. We wish we could be different, we wish we could take different photographs. 

So much of modern photography is predicated on the search for our voice, our style, our unique mark in an ocean of wonderful photography. It is very similar to our own search for identity in the social media obsessed world...and why should we not be obsessed, is not social media a window into the world beyond our front door? 

Why does any of this matter you might ask? Because if we put a piece of ourselves in the photographs we take, is photography not the search of who we are? As we dig into technical information, the physics of lenses and light, are we not looking for better ways to tell the world about us? When we capture that amazing image, not by luck but through careful planning, so we not feel a great deal of pride?  Pride in what?  In the physics that bent the light into our sensor? Or because we feel that the image can transmit what we are trying to say about ourselves?  

Look at the opposite scenario...imagine that you go the New York City, and while on the plane you start looking through social media to get ideas on places to go shoot.  You start to see a reoccurring image that is absolutely wonderful so you mark it on the map, you note it in your notebook and schedule a morning to go out and photograph it yourself. 

You wake up early on the day, happy to see it is a clear and beautiful morning.  You walk out of the sleepy hotel lobby, and start the walk to the Brooklyn Bridge.  As you cross the bridge you take pictures of the bridge and the early morning joggers crossing it with you.  You keep walking and finally get to DUMBO where you can see the Manhattan Bridge and the iconic shot of the Empire State Building through its base.

There it is the iconic shot. You go back to your hotel and go through your shots of the day and you just keep going back to this shot and feel absolutely....nothing. No sense of accomplishment, no sense of wonder. You are looking at someone else, a photo that tells nothing of who you are. 

If you had stumbled across the site, and seen the photograph, taken the photo you would see your imagination come through. But that is not what happened. You took a photo through another persons eyes. You may as well ask AI to create the image for you and sleep in.

So what drove you to take that picture? It is safe, it requires no courage as it says nothing about you.  All the photograph says is that you have the technical skills to take the same picture so many others have done before you. Nice, safe, pretty and empty.

We photographers have a choice to make. We can decide the photography is a transactional art, where we create what people want to see, or photography is an introspective art, revealing things about us as well as the subject and place we photograph. Once we understand that what we aim for is indeed introspective, then we start to ask a whole different set of questions.

Instead of mimicking the photographs we see we begin to ask ourselves what do we want to capture? What image can help tell the story we want to tell? With our current technical skill set, what can we produce that would communicate? 

"If your photographs aren't good enough, you are not close enough." The famous line by Robert Capa takes on a different meaning if we are creating introspective art. "Shoot what you know." starts to make more sense. All of a sudden photography starts to be about us, our mood and what we are wanting to say. When we trip across the image that speaks to us, is it not telling us something that we relate to? Do we not feel that kinship with the photographers and is this not our ultimate goal when we press the shutter?  

Take your Eiffel Tower photo, shoot the iconic shots because sometimes they can be fun but in the end, these will not make your favorite list. That quick snapshot you took with that old camera of the scene that just cried out to you...that one...the one that speaks of tradition, motion and a bygone area that you never really knew but always felt a part of...that image...