This is another view-from-my-office photo.
Most photography web sites are about equipment. I’m referring to photography web sites not photographer web sites. Such photography sites write about gear because it’s quick and easy.
There are some web sites that offer photography advice and instruction. But these “nuts and bolts” sites are superficial and intended for beginners. Quick bites of junk food. Tastes good for the few minutes you’re consuming it.
There are few, if any, photo web sites that deal with more esoteric topics, something that might interest photographers with 20, 30, or more, years of experience. Such a site wouldn’t have to be about finding inspiration. It could be about the Zen or philosophy of photography. But longtime photographers may be beyond even this. (Susan Sontag’s 1977 book, On Photography, is worth reading.)
Search engines tell us what we asked for and not necessarily what we need to know. So how do you search for what you don’t know you don’t know?
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
― attributed to Aristotle and others
When I was your age
The professional photographers I met in the 1970s and early 1980s, who collectively inspired me to become a photographer in the mid-1980s, were very different from the photographers I’ve met, or whose web sites I’ve visited, in the past fifteen years.
Back then there were no computers and no Photoshop so everything had to be done in-camera, ideally in one exposure. Creativity, technical expertise, and personal style had to be in sync before the shutter button was pressed. Or to rephrase that: eye, mind and heart had to merge.
Today’s photographers are too gear-orientated and too software-dependent. Yes, I know this sounds like, “When I was your age, we had it much tougher.” But photography is not a workflow and it’s not about “captures.” Photography isn’t a bunch of camera settings followed by a software recipe.
There’s more to photography than the mechanics and the techniques.
Somehow Photoshop and the ease with which one can produce an image has degraded the quality of photography in general.
– US photographer Elliott Erwitt
There are zillions of technically impeccable photos online, many of which are edited to pixel perfection. But many of these images are boring, sterile or clinically dead.
A photograph that just shows something isn’t enough.
. . . photography is equally capable of recording everything and revealing nothing.
– Peter Galassi, former photography curator for The Museum of Modern Art
Yellow Brick Road
There are many web sites that use “Zen” and “photography” in the same sentence. Many of these sites just repeat the cliché “learning to see” mantra. But photography isn’t really about seeing something; it’s about feeling something. A photographer has to feel something so the viewer can feel something.
The common advice for writers is to “write what you know.” For photographers, it might be to “shoot what you want to know.” Use photography as a door rather than as a mirror.
To find a new door, a photographer may think they need better customers who offer more challenging work or high profile work. I could make some great photos if only I had good customers with prestigious jobs.
Near the end of The Wizard of Oz movie, Glinda the good witch tells Dorothy that she always had the power to go home. But Dorothy first needed to learn some lessons. Dorothy learned that it’s not enough to just want something, you have to take action and that you need only look within yourself to reach your goals.
A longtime professional photographer lost on a yellow brick road may eventually learn that the only good customer they need is themselves. Photographic growth and fulfillment has to come from within and can’t be found in an endless forest of web sites.
