“Style is a reflection of your attitude and your personality.”
– Shawn Ashmore
Photography is a very practical subject. It offers an outlet where a person can go let off steam and photograph anything they please in any way they like — all for good or bad.
You might buy a camera, choose a good lens, then realise, after a little practice, that maybe you need to stop and think about what you are doing, how to do it better than the day before.
That’s why, after many years as an artist and photographer, I started a YouTube channel. I wanted to offer a little helping hand to anybody who needs to reflect on what’s going on when we look through the lens. The thing is, that’s not such an easy task — to help others.
I watch a lot of YouTube channels on all sorts; photography, politics, and cats. The cat videos beat all of life’s offerings, hands down. There’s nothing like a cat to teach us the art of light heartedness.
Helping other photographers to think like an artist, to take their time and stop using the digital camera as if they are firing a static machine gun at anything and everything that moves, is a tough call.
I don’t want to be too authorative in my videos, I don’t want to come across like the Kung-Foo Grasshopper of photography, offering wise words that almost sound like Japanese koans for meditation — “become the camera, become the object, be one with you sensor.” would be a bit too, have to go and puke, side of things.
Encouraging people to navel gaze on an active mission to get good street shots, or landscape photos, might be leading people up the garden path.
So, it’s difficult to keep up the good work. But I’ll keep at it. There’s something satisfying about making a video and later the same day, seeing that people watched it, liked watching it, and left their own views on the subject in the comments.
Like writing, making videos is about saying something that resonates well with an audience. Something useful.
I’ve even had comments that are not so nice — so, I must be doing something right; not trying to please everybody.
I’m a person who loves to ponder a point worth pondering, to meditate on philosophies, and drink coffee and stare out the back window at a blackbird sitting on a blossoming tree.
I believe this informs me about the things I see, when I take photos.
Likewise, I see the poetry in photography. We stop and look at nature, human-made objects like buildings, things that show us the past, half constructed objects that indicate future possibilities, and I’ll see the poetry that can be captured with a photograph.
It’s all about rhythms, rhymes, colours and tones, reflections of light, and depths of shadows-It’s an exciting world that many people simply walk past.
The photographer feels obliged to go out and seek the poetry of life, then bring it back home. Like a hunting dog let loose across the fields to seek its quarry.
When I go out into the streets of Berlin to take photos, I notice how my anticipation causes my heart to patter like a gentle snare drum introducing the beginning of an upbeat tune. My feet start to shuffle, stop, my eyes searching for that poetic quarry. It always there, I know this, I only need to slow my mind and see it right in front of myself.
Capturing visual poetry is also a practical activity. To know the capabilities of the camera and lens in your hand, by studying the triangle of light — F-Stop, ISO, shutter speed, and becoming good at it, you develop a secret sense that leads your feet to the right spot at the right time of day.
The sun and the shadows offer you their interplay of dark and light for a few seconds.
You point, look, adjust and shoot. And maybe, later, walk home satisfied with a pocket full of visual poetry.
