What do you photograph?

Bill Pierce

Bill Pierce

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Much of the time on this forum we discuss the craft and the technical aspects of photography simply because it is the one thing we have in common. But what we point our cameras at is different. Looking at my digital files I see that 6,666 images of family and friends; 5,812 professional shots, mostly news and documentary along with some portraiture. I always think you should point your camera at what is important and of interest to you, and, if folks liked your pictures, they would have been fascinated by the actual people and the events in the picture.

That’s a long way from folks who like to photograph beauty, be it landscapes or pin ups. Some folks like to photograph their travels. I have a friend who photographs beautiful still lives never leaving his house.

What do you photograph? And more important, do you have any idea why?
 
Mostly street work. I enjoy a "step back" approach, giving due credit to the city and environment as much as the people. Some nature shots, flowers and interesting insects. Also like to take pictures of my own equipment - gear porn if you like to call it that way :D
 
I photograph whatever interests me. Reason why is self evident.

What interests me? Travel, people, landscape, and anything in interesting light.
 
Currently I have 59,000 selfies, 37,000 cat shots, and 5 family member photos.
That's cuz they got in the way of the cat shots.
 
I'm trying to get back into photography after a long dry spell. I'm an old slide shooter.

I'm mostly interested in photography as a graphic art, striving to create images that arrest and delight the eye, communicating on the level of feeling.

I like to shoot landscapes/nature on ISO 100 slide films in my 120 TLRs (love square composition) and 135 manual focus SLRs.

I used to really like windowlight portraiture in 135 with the old Agfachrome 1000.

I've lived abroad and taken long trips abroad (6 weeks to 6 months), documenting these experiences with compact RF cameras (Olympus 35RC and a Canonet GIII 17 QL). These cameras were perfect for this application and I never felt limited by them.

My challenge now is to create abstract images by isolating elements in a scene purely for their combined graphic effect.

- Murray
 
I photograph ideas – typically but not always translated into still lives. I can spend years taking one photograph – some ideas are difficult to photograph...

For example, I wanted to photograph a river that disappeared centuries ago, flowing through fields that have been swallowed by a city: but how do you photograph something that no longer exists, that has left no trace? It took three years of living with this particular urge until I woke up with an idea of how to photograph something from the past you can't see – and able to create photographs that will be understood by viewers (photography is a mode of communication, so one definition of a bad photograph is a photograph that the intended viewer doesn't understand). I'm in the midst of finishing this project, which will be published as a book. (I've been a bit vague about what I'm photographing and how as I'm not allowed to say too much because of contractual reasons.)

Other things I've photographed:

• The speed at which technology advances and becomes obsolete today
• The importance of fast food in today's culture and its impact
• Why we collect objects, especially nature, and our need to order and classify the things we collect.

These three ideas were photographed as the projects "Digital Archaeology", "Fast" and "Insecta", respectively (they're on my website).

If anyone's in Brighton, UK, over the next few weeks, the technology project (displayed as lightboxes) is in the exhibition "Unit 8" - part of the Brighton Photo Fringe 2014 photography festival, www.platformcollective.com:

Bz6Xqq4IAAABfCu.jpg
 
Environmental Portraits
Interesting vehicles
Landscapes that show some form of human impact

I'm not always successful with those, but its what I look for.
 
I photograph the way I see, whatever I notice. All photography is documentation, but there is a difference between documenting a "scene" and documenting how it is "seen." These five points that I share with my students sum up how I decide what to photograph.

1. See light rather than things. This means any subject is a fit subject for making photographs including the same subjects, over and over again, described differently in different light.

2. Eliminate the unnecessary. Images have borders and the artist uses these borders and the graphic elements within the frame to play off each other and direct the viewer to the most important part of the image, eliminating anything from the frame that does not support a well delineated design.

3. See the extraordinary within the ordinary. Understand that images suggest something beyond the literalness of their place and moment. Realize there is a rich cultural library to draw on that can suggest a narrative or metaphor that invites the viewer to be a co-creator in the meaning of the image.

4. Shed all the preconceptions you become aware of. What stands in the way most in making art, is the expectations of others about the final outcome. When we set a bar for the artist's direct experience of the world through the creative process, we necessarily limit their possibilities. Knowledge of skills and processes can be acquired, but unique personal vision can only be discovered through shedding of the perceptions of others we have taken on as our own.

5. Most photographers look through their viewfinders to identify images they have seen before. We re not doing that. I tell my students, "Don't make the images we've all seen before. Make the images, that if you don't make them, no one else will ever get to see.
 
"...I photograph beauty in everyday situations..."

As an admirer and follower of yours, I agree.
It shows in your pics.

Giorgio
 
I used to just be a landscape/nature kind of person, but I've been trying to expand on that over the years. I always wanted to be an industrial photographer when I was younger, so that creeps in from time to time. I have tried sport, street, and portraiture, but not enough to amount to much.

Mainly now I just shoot whatever is out there. My film rolls used to just be on one subject, but now may have three to five different ones on them, and not necessarily in any order.

I have found that what gear I am using will influence what I shoot, or how I shoot it.

PF
 
Thanks to Bill for so simple, yet interesting topic.

I don't count my pictures. Couple of years ago I checked my 500D, just for curiosity. 70K+ pictures were taken, but it isn't the only camera I use :)

Yes, I use camera for work. My iPhone camera, to take equipment settings, versions and licence numbers :)

The rest of the pictures are taken for simple reasons. If I feel this thing, place and moment to be valuable for personal usage. Or I just like this person :)

Sometimes it is street scene, sometimes it is a bug, sometimes it is landscape and often it is family and people who are close to us.
 
My domain is the old, the abandoned, the about to vanish away. I am a visual historian of mid-20th-century America and a recorder of the interface between man and nature; a keeper of vanishing ways of life.
 
It's funny. When I first took an interest in Rf cameras and this forum I was looking for something, photographic, that would free me from the corporate, commercial photography I was working in at the time. As such I was much like Helen, pop a camera in my hand, walk, let my mind free up and see what caught my eye.

Now, after six years of working purely freelance, I find I need some level of structure in place for my personal photography. Ideas formed into projects and followed up. A rough plan in mind for each days ( or however long I have) shooting. Even when I photograph something random or that has caught my attention/interest its put into a mental folder and subsequently the image itself is stored within a folder of similarly themed images for either a future project or to stimulate ideas for future projects.

Of course, simply saying 'people' would be the quickest and most honest answer. They're just so fascinating
 
I agree that people are the most interesting subject matter
(For me)

For non-people subjects, I like urban decay and places where nature is taking back and taking over, formerly created by man. A tree growing through an abandoned car would be an example of this.
 
I photographed landscapes and urbanscapes for years. Not literal, detailed work, but I sought a more expressive or strongly graphical approach. A few years ago I tried a people/street project -- just to see what it was like -- and have been shooting that way ever since. Now, anything but human beings feels relatively lifeless to me. The panaroma of human experience is remarkable. Wish I'd started earlier.

John
 
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