My Photography crisis

Taking a new lens for a walk I took this experimental shot on Farleton Knott, then played around with the image in Lightroom. Shot on a Canon 5D with a 16-35mm lens.

I quite like the image, despite it being overworked and distorted. Or is that the whole point? What exactly is this image, or the million like it, trying to achieve?

I'm one of those people and I'm sure there are many of us, that has at least one creative bone in his body, but lacks any particular talent with which to manifest it. So when I take my camera on the fells or anywhere else for that matter, Im looking for the shot that will satisfy that creative driver in me. As a result, I take shots like this one in the vain hope that arty farty will actual turn into something interesting, even challenging. It rarely does.

Of course there are so many different ways to take a photograph and so many different reasons for doing so. My generation took a couple of rolls of film (36 frames on each roll if we felt flush) on our holidays and snapped away at anything that resembled scenery or looked vaguely cute. If we were really flush, both rolls of films would be processed and the results pasted in an album using those little paper corners that had a lick-able glue side. This would then be our affirmation that we had, indeed, enjoyed our holiday and would provide an archive for future reference. Or most likely not.

I was in my early 20s when I really took up an interest in photography. A second hand Olympus OM1 was my weapon of choice. If I remember correctly I had a 50mm lens and could only dream of owning a 135mm telephoto lens, with which I could surely bag any shot, from any distance. It was a dream never realised as career and raising a family consigned the OM1 to history. It was nearly 30 years later that I picked up a DSLR and re-kindled my quest for THAT great image.

So what's the crisis? Well perhaps "crisis" is too strong a word. Suez was a crisis, the treatment of women in India is a crisis. Mine is more of a dilemma. A lack of clear direction and understanding of the medium of photography and which of its may facets I really want to embrace.

This photograph is an example of what I'm not about. Yes, it might be quite interesting to some, but it's not telling me a story. It has no provenance, no dynamic and nothing to say apart from "I'm a glowering scene with an angry rock". I want to know why the rock is angry. I want to know what life means to this lifeless form.

Documentary style photography achieves this when done well and I love the work of Martin Parr. I've tried to emulate the style and had some quite pleasing results and a few glares to boot. It is the voyeur aspect that I struggle with. Stealing moments of happiness, despair or plain boredom requires a degree go bullish disregard for privacy that I find uncomfortable at best. But documenting real lives and real events requires that you remove yourself as a person and become a recording medium. Dispassionate, non-judgemental and fearless. I need to work on fearless.

The rain has stopped, the light looks good. I've got to go.