Shooting with intention
The Novus Building under construction, Durham, NC (2024)
My first year of photography started with me flailing around for several months - randomly taking photos of whatever happened to land in front of my lens with no real plan or purpose. I would go out on a photo walk or out to a nature park to shoot birds and I’d come home with 1500 photos that I spammed on burst mode whenever something even potentially interesting came into view.
I’m pretty sure that there is a little dopamine hit every time I hit the shutter button which created some sort of Pavlovian response. I was deriving so much joy from the act of taking any picture that I was not taking the time to actually take a quality photograph.
I was not shooting with intention.
To combat this behavior I started to iterate on some ideas which were intended to help me focus on fewer things by adding constraints. In this 5-minute video I talk a little about what those are but if you prefer to read - it’s pretty simple:
Start with a theme. The theme could be something like “blue” or “doorway” - the idea is that each photo should somehow relate to the theme. It might be literal or my interpretation. Having a theme meant that not everything was interesting. It helped me focus on looking for something that (a) met the theme and (b) was interesting.
Use a single focal length. Limiting to a single focal length forced me to think about my compositions more and required me to slow down, physically move, and then re-evaluate what I was seeing. Just taking this moment to think was often all it took to find a more interesting photo.
Limit the number of photos. I would limit the number of photos to 24 or 36 - like a roll of film. This reduced my overshooting and forced me to change my mindset around what was worth taking a photo of. Letting go of an opportunity was hard at first but now it’s easier to look at something and after thinking, accept that I should just move on.
JPEG only, straight out of camera (SOOC). This was the final piece. Shooting JPEG only withoutediting meant that I needed to really focus on getting it right out of the camera. I needed to really think about exposure, framing, my edges and background … everything that I would normally have fixed in Capture One or Photoshop, I now needed to get right the first time.
Have these ideas made me the next Ansel Adams? No, not even close.
I still suck out loud.
But what they have done is helped me adjust my mindset around how I approach photography and they have made photo walks a lot more fun. By adding some constraints I feel more focused, more intentional, and more satisfied when I get it right.
