Where To Point The Camera

When shooting the 'grand landscape' there is often only one place to aim the camera and the issues are around timing and where to plant the tripod more than what to shoot, but a common scenario is to be wandering around looking for photographs in an area of interesting material. This could be an outdoor farmers market, an old abandoned industrial plant, an interesting bridge, a canyon, a field, an abandoned farm yard, a street somewhere in an exotic country, or a junkyard.

So where do you point the camera, or more specifically, what should you even look at?

Common to all these subjects is the need to make order out of chaos. An attempt to photograph the whole invariably leads to dissapointment, leaving the viewer with none of the excitement you felt while there. A picture of an entire bazaar in Morroco would look more like an illustration for a report on traffic congestion. It wouldn't even make a good travel brochure illustration as it gives nothing of the experience of being there.

To make a good travel brochure picture, you'd want one or more vendors and their wares, colourful clothing and exotic backgrounds. You probably wouldn't include the tacky tourist in the awful hat, too bright shirt and bad shorts. As a creative artist though, you might want to make a study of tourists and their garb. If you did want the vendor, it would be because of an interesting face, because of patterns in his wares displayed, because of an interesting shadow across the scene, because of repetitive shapes or colour contrasts, balance, etc.

Let's pick a less exotic scenario. You are wandering around a junk yard. There are heaps of rusting cars, piles of old parts, broken glass, puddles of dubious liquids, and scattered around, people searching through the junk for treasures. Your aim is to produce a series of pictures which represent the 'junk yard' experience.

We've discussed the process of composing a picture in the past but that assumes you have found something worth photographing - what about the process of finding the pictures. I think you can imagine without too much difficulty two camera carrying photographers wandering through the junk yard. One is a hobbyist of little experience and no background in art, the other is Cartier Bresson reincarnated. The former wanders through, almost randomly taking snapshots of colourful piles of junk, gets bored and heads home having decided that the problem is the junkyard, Once home none of the images look even vaguely interesting. The other photographer is kept extremely busy and in fact is frustrated when at the end of the day, the gates are closed and he goes home tired and happy. On looking at his images, there are many which show the elements of good photographs. More to the point, he had no trouble finding subject matter.

I've discussed before the difficulty people have had trying to reproduce the photographs of Ansel Adams in Yosemite. Another point though is that it's not that uncommon to be disappointed with Yosemite because it doesn't look like what Ansel photographed. He made order out of chaos.

This leaves the question of whether it's possible to explain where to look. Never being afraid to shoot my mouth off, here goes.

Rules For Looking

1) Almost always you are looking to simplify. So look around for areas that are less confusing. I was going to say less cluttered, but perhaps that is what you are photographing but even there you are looking for a representative area of clutter with an element of consistency of clutter.

2) Look for the part that represents the whole. You might be photographing the junkyard experience, so how about concentrating on the expression on someone's face as they discover the hubcap from a 1952 Rambler they are refurbishing. If the junkyard is about rust, then look around for the best rust.

3) Look for something that CAN be photographed. Some things won't work - harsh lighting, inadequate depth of field, cluttered foregrounds or backgrounds. If you can't see a way round these 'flaws's, then move on.

4) If you can't see anything interesting to photograph, you have to ask why you are there, and if you aim your camera to please the audience rather than yourself, then you are not being an artist. Find something interesting. It might be the plant life of a junkyard but before finding the photograph, find the interest. backwards just doesn't work - yet many of us have spent much of our lives shooting that way - looking for the great photograph which will then hopefully be interesting - the gods will not favour you!

5) Instead of trying to say something different (let's face it, you aren't the first photographer to visit a junkyard), try to say something about your experience of the junkyard - are you intrigued by the shapes, the decay, the people, pollution, the amount of waste. Do you in fact have any reaction at all to wandering around the place? If you have no emotional reaction to wandering around, the outcome of your shoot is dubious at best. you could treat it as an exercise but don't build your hopes for great art.

6) Explore - get down on your knees, look inside the cars, climb if you can. Limiting yourself to the world seen from standing eye height and looking ahead is to deny yourself most of the world. What about straight down? Can you truly say 'I have seen' by the time you leave?

7) Stop! After wandering around for a while and likely finding nothing interesting to photograph, pause for a minute and analyze the scene. OK, so you found nothing intersting to photograph, but did you find nothing interesting, full stop? If the answer is truly 'nothing', then perhaps you should go home. If your reaction though is 'cool place', then ask yourself what's cool about it and resume your wandering now focussed on what's intersting.

These are not rules I photograph by. In fact I can see in my shooting some of the 'wrong headedness' discussed. Nevertheless, I think if I start using these 'rules' more often, I will spend less time frustrated - and that's a good thing!