Comment by jfengel
3 years ago
I am a lousy photographer. I never get that "this was the shot" feeling.
I assume I could develop it with practice. I just never did. I rarely had a camera growing up, and now that I have one with me all of the time, I treat it like the Instamatics I used to have. The pictures are terrible.
At best, they're a kind of bookmark that I was at that place and saw that thing. It won't have an emotional resonance for anybody but me, and for me it's just bringing up the much better picture in my head. If they want a good picture of the thing, I'll go find one that somebody else took.
All of which is to say... I really admire good photographers. I respect their work, and the diligence it took to develop their eye.
This is, as you note, an interesting art piece on that same subject. I'm afraid I'm better with words, so this is mine.
It's really hard, maybe impossible to come up to a new place and instantly take a good shot.
You need to stay there, move around, explore the space, the light, the interaction with the living.
Eventually you find a good way to tell the story of the place. You get lucky. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it isn't.
+1 to that
I didn't take pictures I was proud of before going to protests to take pictures of people there, and trying to frame them as "badass" as possible.
Now I mostly shoot animals and landscapes, but I've been doing it for years at every oportunity I get, so my "gut feel" is strong there. I'm not great at portraits, for example, and have 0 interest in street shooting.
For what it's worth, maybe try to write down your thoughts on places that matter to you, when they do (kind of like a picture). Or a quick freeform poem