#17 - So What Do You Like To Shoot?

It’s been a fair bit since I posted about my street photos on here. My private Flickr account and conscience sag equally under the weight of unseen, unshared, and undeclared work. I’ve also been shooting a little bit out of my comfort zone lately, mostly on film, trying to figure out how to reconcile all of my photographic tastes, the variety of which recently became clear when I stammered an unconvincing 10 minute + response to a simple “So what do you like to shoot?”

I like to shoot so many things, and I keep adding to the list. I’d figured as I got older my gaze would narrow, becoming keen on a few patently Chris themes, but for better or worse I remain wide-eyed and clumsy in my dance with specificity.

Thinking about photos can also get in the way of taking photos, and part of re-examining my process has been to shoot simply what tugs at my eye, rather than trying to make these little squares of colour fit into the shapeless boundary of an idea. It’s got me out of the house shooting a little more often, and it’s keeping me open minded.

I was walking around with another photographer this weekend, and we were talking about how to ID your subject. How do you know what it is you want to shoot? It can be hard to know what is photo-worthy if everything is photographable.

Choosing what I shoot (and what I show, and there’s a discrepancy there) is influenced by maybe two main factors. The first is a guiding principle: try shoot unrepeatable images. The more elements you add to an image, or the more sensitive you are to the poetry of a moment, the less likely you or anyone else is to be able to do it again. These elements can be visual (what you see in the photograph) or contextual (the time, place, situation in which the photograph was made). To my eye, ten different scenarios of ten different subjects can be made cohesive if you keep this in mind.

The second thing I’m guided by is responding to the visceral tug to take a photo. Some situations just stoke my desire to shoot, when I see them I kind of wake up a little. This feeling wasn’t always that strong, it’s been years of paying attention to it, and gratifying it, that has lead to it developing and becoming a more powerful influence on where I point my camera. I believe the best photos draw feelings out of the viewer, and I can’t imagine achieving that if the scene doesn’t draw feelings out of the photographer.

So here is the (abridged) list of things I like to shoot:

Pigeons

Poles

Natural v. Unnatural (Circle, Square)

No Parking cones

Modern Objects

Light shards//Light webs

The right trees

Red

Sticks in a driveway

Printed people

The Stream

Grey

Work

Magic

To my photographer friends, what’s on your list?