how would you describe your personal vision?

there are some interesting answers for most. for philosophy of shooting, can i say I take pictures because I have to?

for me, photography gives me a excuse to go out to places normal people will seldom visit. it's also a reason to trespass into areas not allowed for people to go into.

that's how i end up somehow discovering a slum town in the middle of a mountain that local people didnt even know about while i was hiking.

the reason is I use photography as a way to keep active and stabilize myself as i suffer from chronic depression. Pressing the shutter is a way to keep my mind clear from noise and bother. also I have a bum memory so I have to shoot to remember what I have done. My visual memory is a mess (as my other sensory memories are stronger). So with picture in hand I can relive that moment with the smells and sounds actually.
 
erikhaugsby said:
Do you have pictures of this town, available online? I'm interested to see what it looks like!
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yep! it was scary cause as i said (in the excerpt) that i could feel eyes looking at me through the windows, but i didnt see anybody. I also heard voices in the forest but they never materialized into people i could see. i could have taken more photos, but i needed something desperately more wider than 28mm. it was cramped in that slum town.

http://kaiwasoyokaze.tumblr.com/post/48500064963/interloping-w-fujifilm-super-mini
 
d.sge said:
I was at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden the other day and came upon a scene that I could Fibonacci and Rule of Thirds the hell out of. There's a building with a beautifully sloping roof with plants growing on top of it. Off in the distance, there's a bit of urban decay going on that supports and contrasts new life perfectly. And the negative is just the right. As I'm zooming into it I can see it has all of the right elements, but two. There's no heart in it. As such, I don't see the point of it. I don't want it my wall. If I saw it on a wall at MOMA I would give it barely a glance.
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I can relate to the above example. But sometimes I think I should have taken the picture anyway (in similar situations).

Photography for me is a lifetime learning process. I can't *always* judge a good picture simply by looking for it. I am simply not that good, and probably will never become that good.

Sometimes I have to work for it in the darkroom or computer to create an image that has a "heart." or just sublimely interesting. That is why I don't believe that photography is a pursuit that solely depend on "vision." The processes is equally important part of the creation of an image.
 
My personal vision is twofold, firstly it's recognizing when a scene or setting might somehow come to resemble that seen in a street photograph, in which case my response is to try recording it as such. (The two, BTW, are not the same; the photograph and the thing being photographed are, as Winogrand reminds us, different in nature.)

Secondly, I'm fascinated with recording the evidence of the human presence in public settings absent the people themselves, as if my photography were some ad hoc form of archeology. This was not consciously purposeful, I've only discovered this intent by studying my past work, but now that I'm aware of it I can begin to concentrate better with this in mind.

BTW, I find many people here are very uncomfortable with talking about "art," and so I find what's most helpful is to pretend that the words "art" and "artist" don't exist and instead simply use other words and terms to describe the subjective relationship between yourself and your images. Most people will be surprised that they do, in fact, have a relationship with their images, even if they are the most casual of shooters and that relationship the most dysfunctional.

~Joe
 
How would I describe my personal vision?

Erratic, most likely. I'm interested in many different things and use diverse cameras and processing aesthetics to explore them.

Minimalist much of the time. Simple lines, simple contrasts of light and dark, simple evidence containing complex thoughts.

Quiet in the large. I'm not too much for big bold glossy statements, I'm more likely to go for an image that allows the eye to find a place to rest and pause.

Deeper than the surface. In sticks and leaves on pavement, I see the cosmos unfolding. In the soft blur of a pinhole, I see motion and change.

It is what it is, and it continues evolving.

G
 
I am basic. Like others, I don't think that I have a vision for photography. My preferred images are far from being posed. I like to capture life around me, as it is.
 
it is since when this thread was posted that I think about it. I have a rough idea of my vision, but not yet able to translate it in words...
robert
PS: and even more difficult in a non native language.
 
I'll take an honest stab at this one... I'm a botanist and naturalist first, photography nut second. My eye toward nature and biodiversity drives my landscape photos. I look for robust, healthy ecosystems and plant communities and try to capture that balance in strong compositions. There's so much more to mother nature than just flowers, trees, streams, lakes and hills (not that I don't occasionally partake in those subjects!). To begin knowing nature (for me, plants) more intimately is akin to taking the blinders off and truly contemplating why we are here, the value of all life forms (except mosquitoes and biting flies), and what are we doing to this pale blue dot.
 
I wrestle with this now and then.
Truth is that I don't have an artistic vision, and that only bothers me
when people ask about it - I have no answer and sometimes people
dismiss your pictures because "they are not part of a vision". One very nice
lady would not hang my pictures in her cafe until I typed up a 'vision statement'
that she could leave around for customers to read ! So I made one up and she
hung 15 of my pictures for 8 weeks.
I think pushing people to describe their vision is a pain in the butt.
How and why does a vision legitimize my pictures?
 
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