philosophy

Journalism Versus Activism with a Camera

The context and process behind a photograph can be interesting on a technical level when it comes to the gear, film, lighting setup, and any artistic emotion or guidance that may have gone into it from a photographer with an interesting backstory to them.

On ‘Exploitation’ in Photography

I recently wrote about the importance of discourse on the ethics around photography, where I offered my perspective on why rules and doctrines around decision making can diminish your ability to stand behind your work, justify your decisions, and really take responsibility and ownership over your vision.

A Perspective on Photography as Meditation

Some years ago I wrote about the (now fairly obvious seeming) perspective of photography as a process of grounded, present awareness in order to achieve a result.

7 Essential Elements to a Good Photo

Photography is a visual art, and as with most art forms, there are no rigid rules or formulas that guarantee a captivating image. However, there are certain key elements that often contribute to an image's impact and appeal.

Introducing Grammar to the Language of Photography

While photography and linguistic language share characteristics, when it comes to actually applying theories and practices between one and the other, it can be hard to remain coherent. This is down to the flaw in thinking that just because a comparison can be made aspects can be transposed between them.

Tourists in Our Own Reality: Susan Sontag’s Photography at 50

This year marks 50 years since Susan Sontag’s essay "Photography" was published in the New York Review of Books. Slightly edited and renamed In Plato’s Cave, it would become the first essay in her collection On Photography, which has never been out of print.

Finding Your Voice in the Non-Verbal Medium of Photography

Language is an underlying reality in our everyday world, present in our thoughts, our words, and even our haptic gestures. When interacting with someone else we are incorporating language to translate abstract thoughts into communication, communication into meaning, and meaning into understanding.

Observation and Investigation for Documentary Photography

If the intention behind a photograph is to produce something photographic, weighted by aesthetic merit, or artistic expression, then it is your observation via the camera that you are most likely going to share in that image.

No Photography is Wasteful If It’s Part of the Growing Process

Failing to succeed doesn't mean failing to progress. I think for many of us the last few pandemic years have spotlighted this sentiment, especially as when it comes to photography “success” is already such a broad and nebulous concept.

Seeing Versus Shooting as a Photographer

The photographer Dorothea Lange once famously said “A camera is a device that teaches you to see without a camera.” I always loved this quotation. Once you get good at shooting, you start to see the world like a photographer — you notice things, you notice light, you look slower, you take pictures in your mind. The camera saves them, but even without one, you see differently.

Synecdoche: The Essence of Photography

I was struggling through Caesar in 10th grade Latin class when I first heard the term “synecdoche” (although the term is from the Greek) — it’s a figure of speech where a part of something is used to represent the whole. Today, familiar synecdoche include “threads” to mean clothing, as in “dig these new threads I’m wearing.” Or “boots on the ground” when talking about soldiers. Or “she got a cool set of wheels” to mean a new car.

The Fundamental Building Blocks of Interesting Photos

My particular interest in photography aims for hitting certain notes in the image, regardless of content. So whether I’m shooting landscapes or my garden, friends at a party, or my kids on vacation, I’d say the approach is consistent.

The Tenets of Neo-Modernism, A Way to Look at Creative Photography

After decades of studying the classic works of photography, I’ve determined there is a historic and philosophical bifurcation in the works created. For convenience, I classify all works as falling into one of two camps, and the group I’m personally drawn to — and one that I find most applicable in discussing current photographic creativity — is what I call “neo-modernism.”

Should Black and White Imply the ‘Age’ of a Photograph?

In many art practices, a new method or process does not usually automatically override the old one. You can still use berries and charcoal to paint a cave wall, paint on a canvas, or put pencil to paper. These do not become irrelevant just because a Wacom tablet can be used to make a digital illustration or a VR for a 3D painting.

Photo Books Are the Cure for the Instagram Disease

Photographer and educator Ted Forbes from the Art of Photography YouTube Channel has published a nine-minute video on the subject of photo books, and how he believes that while they contain art, are also art themselves and are a cure for what many might see as the disease that is Instagram.

Havana Dancer: Photography and Moments of Love

The light in the gutted movie theater is muted and I immediately begin to consider which camera to use, what ISO I can get away with, what is my fastest lens. The dancers we have come to photograph are changing into costume somewhere in the back of the building that serves as their rehearsal hall.

Regarding Photographs: And In Conclusion…

This is the end of my essay series on how we see and think about photographs. While I could certainly ramble on more or less forever, this is a good place to stop.

Regarding Photographs: On the Ethics of Photography II

In the previous essay I set aside a category of ethical issues around photographs. Specifically, the issues that arise from the very existence of the photo, rather than from the meaning of it. Issues around consent, and around extraction (who gets paid.)

Regarding Photographs: On the Ethics of Photography I

In the ongoing spirit of applying my new(?) model of thinking about photographs to old questions, let’s take a pass through “ethics” to see if anything interesting shows up.

Regarding Photographs: On the Truth of a Photo

I’ve been writing for a while now on this single idea: that photographs transport you, in a sense, to the scene of the photograph; that you therefore react to photographs as if you were there, viscerally; that you react specifically by imagining the world around the photo; and finally that this imaginative reaction, this meaning you make, is of central importance in understanding a photograph.

Regarding Photographs: Photo Criticism — An Example

If you’ve been following along for any length of time, you might be starting to wonder if the author here even owns a camera, and if so, whether he can work it at all. I can! I really do, and I can! I mean, kinda, anyways.

Regarding Photographs: Photo Criticism

The previous essays in this series have tried to develop some ideas about what happens when people look at photos. The realism, that mass of realistic detail, causes (I claim) a visceral reaction: we feel, we react, we think, a little as if we were transported by the photograph into the scene itself.

Matter Deconstructed: The Observer Effect and Photography

Photographs are omnipresent in our daily lives. From social media and advertising to family photos hanging on your wall. Images are used for identification and as evidence, as well as informing us at a cultural level about who we are.

Regarding Photographs: Reading Photos II

In the previous essay, I introduced a couple of imaginary photographs. The first, an old woman celebrating her birthday with family and friends; the second a photograph of a man seated in a chair, attentive to something out of frame.

Regarding Photographs: Reading Photos I

This is the third essay in this series, and it begins a smaller sequence of notes running over the ways we as viewers make sense of pictures. We spend, I think, too much time thinking about what happens before and during the making of a picture, but not enough on what happens when someone actually looks at it. For most of us, for most pictures, surely this is the most interesting time?

Regarding Photographs: On Consent

In the previous essay, I made an argument that photographs (and things that are like photographs) metaphorically transport us into the scene of the photo. We react, body and mind, a little bit as if we were actually present.

Regarding Photographs: What Does a Photograph DO Anyways?

So, you make photographs? Or take them, or something like that? I’m going to guess here that you probably hope people will like them, or see something in them that’s interesting. You’re interested in how people see photographs, how people make sense of photos. Me too.

If Sharpness Truly Mattered, Cartier-Bresson Would Be a Joke

While teaching a recent workshop, I joked that street photography was the only genre where people would buy $3,000 worth of cameras and lenses and then deliberately use them to make out of focus, grainy, imperfect images. This led to a pretty interesting discussion about the merits to imperfection.

The Value of a ‘Photographic’ Photograph

Discussing what makes a “photographic” photograph can seem like a bit of a tautology, but I think that my understanding of what I’m trying to achieve with my photographs has been helped by this idea.

Do Photos Really Tell Stories?

It's funny how deceiving a photograph can be. I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that this roller skater has turned his head to check out the girl on her phone as he skates past her. Without any context, that does appear to be the story here.

Why I Love Photography

There are many different reasons that photographers love photography. Almost always any individual photographer’s interest is a mixture of multiple aspects.

Is Isolation Overrepresented in Street and Documentary Photography?

One of the byproducts of the new-wave approach to street photography, which champions anonymity, mystery, and a cinematic aesthetic, is that there is an absolute abundance of images featuring silhouetted figures and shadow play. These are the kind of images I started off creating, and there are some fantastic artists who have utilized this style over the years, my favorite of these being Fan Ho, one of the classic progenitors of this style.

Cultivating Diversity in My Photography

There is an excellent quote regarding practice attributed to legendary martial artist Bruce Lee that I think provides a great framework for many pursuits but also highlights one of my earliest struggles with ideas around “style” in photography: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Prioritizing Concept Over Aesthetic in Street and Social Documentary Photography

There seems to be a trend in current photography goals to achieve a “look” to one's work. I feel this is a short-sighted goal, and that a consistent aesthetic is more the result of careful curation of a large body of work, rather than something that ought to be deliberately achieved.

The Eye Contact Conundrum in Street Photography

There are so many factors to potentially juggle for any given street/documentary situation that eye contact for me tends to fall a bit to chance -- if it happens it happens and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. It is rarely something I feel makes or breaks an image, but more frequently I’ve been thinking about what specific function working to achieve (or deliberately avoid) eye contact could offer to my photographs.

Travel Without Traveling for Street and Documentary Photography

Whenever I travel for photography, there’s a real sense of anticipation for the scenarios I might face, the feeling that the next great moment is just around the corner. As a street and documentary photographer, my intention when traveling is not to see “the sights”, or to eat the foods, or to hear the music -- instead, it is specifically to meet the people and see what aspects of myself exist in foreign situations.

Photography as a Zen Art

Sometimes you know about two things in completely different parts of your brain, and then one day, for no reason, you put them together and your head explodes — a cascade of understandings like the last scene in “Usual Suspects”. After 40 years of taking pictures, that happened to me. One idea changed me overnight. And if you have a camera it will change you, too.

The Paradox of ‘Timelessness’ in Street Photography

I've noticed that a commonly used compliment for street photographs is to describe them as "timeless." My interpretation of this is that it is used to mean that there are characteristics of the image which in some way transcend the boundaries of the context it was made in and can exist almost in its own context, its own space.