Sometimes it is helpful to just step back and see how we have evolved as photographers….. Evolution isn’t always good/bad, but simply a new take, a new direction perhaps spurned on by something you saw, or a challenge that you want to accomplish.
When I first seriously started in my photography, I was a nature photographer and looked to capture that animal or bird and have the glint of their eyes seen in my images. But with the advent of larger lens, and camera’s with AI type elements, the actual act of photography became relatively easy. Yes, the composition or capture of the animal was needed, but some of the challenge disappeared. I was beginning to see others capture the same with little knowledge or skill, simply technology.
So I shifted, as a distant, almost hidden challenge within me was occurring simultaneously…to that of capturing the elusive ‘human’. Hence…..street photography over-powered me and where I remain today.
At first, I was relatively into ‘faces’…oddities…..the decisive moment as Henri Cartier Bresson put forth. Yet I needed more and found the works of Deido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira. I loved the combination of ‘digital and analog’ as their work showcased. It wasn’t about just capturing the moment, but more capturing the ‘Art’ found in the streets. I turned from less of an emphasis on humans and more on the angles, geometry….. Then came Fan Ho, who I still love….. beautiful….artistic, mysterious….filmish….
I continued to grow as a photographer…… I started looking for recent photographers and while many recent street folks are just into ‘street’….I have tried to gleam what I could from a few of their works and attempt to transfer it to mine. Now, photographers like Sean Tucker or Duane Michaels interest me. Again, not just angles and lines and geometry in the buildings but more so in the shadows, all the while to continue to downplay the humans seen in the photographs. I couldn’t care less who they ‘are’, but I know I need them. They become ‘intangibles’ to my photographs but are needed. If I look at a mailbox, it is just a mailbox, but if it is part of the scene, it belongs. Just the same as humans. No reason to showcase their faces ‘up close and person’, and ti identify or place in perfect focus, but more to showcase the humanity surrounded by the situation they find themselves in….the angles, geometry, shadows….. and light. Oh the light…. This is so valuable and to find the right light, and always on the hunt for.
I look at most street photographers and see ‘me’….but a long time ago. Now I look within and I see growth…again, not good nor bad, but growth as I put forth challenges to conquer. I am no longer happy with just an image of a person with a funny face, or strange clothes or am challenged by snapping their shot without them knowing it ….but want the whole image now to ‘come together’ as ‘one’….I want the photograph to become ‘art’ with a statement it makes, a question it forces….