Hey dude….too many photos… and I shoot film!!! Imagine if I shot digital and came back from a vacation with a thousand downloads. Dah; then what? Then I would have to select ‘A’ photo from essentially 20 identical posed shots which occurred during the same scene/photo —all the time looking for the perfect one.
Lucky I shoot film, eh? Yet admittedly, even shooting film rends me with multiple boxes of stored negatives not to mention how many I have scanned to a digital file. But is it really the numbers game; or hold up, back up….return to the point where you haven’t even taken a shot. Ask yourself….what am I shooting? And when you do that, you find the real issue at hand.
“What am I taking photo’s of and why?” For years my idea of street photography was what many people did, done, continue to do….shoot anything that moves or looks cool, or shoot the bum on the street or totally mindless ‘tourist shots’ that belong on postcards, or look for insane anal features such as capturing nosehairs or butt cracks. Whoa Dude…. I soon bored of that. The same ole crap that gets posted to Photo websites as ‘art’ becomes mindless dribble and even then, then what? Tons of photographs/negatives (since I shoot film) and again, then what?
So listen man…take some advice from an old fart photographer….I ‘Project-out’ my photo-ops. IE: as a typical photo-shoot goes: I load my film, grab my lens and lock the door knowing that I walk out that same door with a true purpose in mind as I walk the streets. Mentally I have zoned in on a certain topic and know what to look for. I have peripheral mental vision as opposed to aimlessly wandering and shooting and coming home with “tourist / postcard?” photographs.
If you look at my photos in the navigation section of my site, you will see that some of my broad topics include a ‘Zine Option Available’. Those are the projects that I have turned into projects. You will also note that I have many other photographs but they are my aimless ones, although categorized. When I want to project them out, I will re-visit those photographs and like a musician creating a song, I will begin to orchestrate my project based photo theme. What do I have, what do I need….. You get it. I orchestrate it. I find what works, get a feel of where I want to be….and go out shooting with that in mind.
Try it….you will begin to find more meaning in your photographs, more purpose. Don’t become The Dude as in the Big Lebowski. Be a photographer with purpose…No aimless wandering…no Tourist Postcard photographs.