Do We Really Have To Love What We Photograph?

Frequent advice is photograph what you love. If that's really the case, then great art would have a lot more pictures of girl friends and hot fudge sundaes. it completely ignores the creative photographer who photographs raw material which in itself is boring but he knows that in the darkroom or computer he can make it sing. A look at Ansel's proof sheets and you might suggest he not give up his day job - though come to think of it, that was commercial photography.

It might be better to think of a photographer as someone who is very observant and that we have to find the things we look at interesting to take a photograph. This better explains the behaviour of most ammateur photographers who are in love with the process of photography and who may or may not become observant over time.

In my experience, photographers who pick up a camera to use as a tool to capture what they observe (the artsy types) become good photographers a hell of a lot faster than the techy types who obcess about films, developers, pixels and profiles. The arty type knows what he wants and only needs to find the path to get there - the techy type doesn't know where he is going, but he has maps for everywhere and lots of gadgets to help him on the way - if only he could figure out the destination. This process can lead to a huge amount of frustration.

I think that many of us started out as techy types and now want to be artsy types and there isn't a lot written about the move from one to the other. I'm going to address this issue in the next while - how to move from techy to artsy.