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My Approach to Photography

If you have read the About page of this site then you know I am not a professional photographer, nor I'm I attempting to be one. Sure I wouldn't mind selling an image or two, having an image published in some fashion, or even having an exhibition of work displayed, but I do not have aspirations of being a full time working professional. What I do have is a passion to create photographic images with strong technical achievement that inspire and excite the viewer, but most importantly myself.

So first and foremost my approach to my photography is too pleased myself with my images. But how do I determine what makes a good image? While I do feel I have a certain amount of natural ability to look at the scenes around me and visualize them in the two dimensional view of a photograph. I feel my current visualization of the way I see the world in images is based on many years of reading about photography and looking at the photographs of others. In the early years of my passion for photography I spent many hours looking at images from famous photographers such as, Helmut Newton, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Beyond the study of work by famous photographers I have a natural tendency to examine the photographs in magazines, books, and newspapers. I ask myself does this image work for me, does it not, if so then what is it about the image that excites me? I buy photography books on visualization, composition, lighting, and books that contain great images. By doing this for many years I have come to learn what it is I like about an image and how to see those images in the world around me. However, just because I see an image doesn’t mean I can always pull it off.

I also approach my photography from a very technical nature. It is very important to me to completely understand my equipment, how it works, what are its capabilities, what are its limitations. I am one those people that DOES read the manual from cover to cover, most likely more than once, and then review it on a fairly regular basis. I also buy books that specifically cover my equipment in more detail than the manual, study them, and use them for reference. Understanding my equipment helps me to know if I can really capture that image I have visualized. Am I currently an expert with every piece of equipment I have? Nope, but I keep trying to get there.

I am also a fairly selective photographer in that I definitely do not use a 'spray and pray' style of shooting. There are many images I see that I elect not to even attempt to capture, knowing that I will be disappointed in the result due to equipment limitations, lighting, or other factors. While many will go ahead and capture the image and be satisfied with a subpar image technically I will usually elect to not waste the memory card and hard drive space. I feel very strongly that for one to improve you must be very critical in what you accept and elect to show, and if I'm not going to be happy enough with the image to show it then why even take it. Does this mean that I never capture images that are a disappointment to me or that I capture many duplicates of an image? Of course not, but I at least have some idea in my head of what I am attempting to capture and whether I have the expertise to pull it off.

I'm not one to rely heavily on post processing of my images, beyond what I consider to be standard developing techniques, as I am a bit old school and try to get my images right in camera. However, I have nothing against using post-processing to make exposure, contrast, saturation, and sharpness adjustments. I view post processing just as I did when I was working with film, when I would make adjustments during the development of the film, and use burning, dodging, and other printing techniques to get the print I was after. All photographs are an interpretation of the world as the photographer saw it and thus I feel there should be no expectation that the image is exactly as it was in the real world, except maybe with photojournalism or documentary images excluded. There is nothing wrong with using in camera or post processing adjustments to change the color balance, saturation, contrast, or other factors within an image to convey the look the photographer is going for. And while major creation of images in Photoshop or other tools is not something I aspire for, I have no problem with those that do.

Lastly, I believe that if you are going to be a serious amateur photography and aspired to improve your photography, you have to shoot at least every other week. I personally try to go out shooting at least 4 to 6 hours every week. Shooting this often helps improve your familiarity with your equipment, trains your photographic eye, and greatly increases your chance of getting that great image.

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