Lamenting the Loss of the When and What in Photography

The sheer volume of photographs being produced has reached unforeseen levels. We take photographs almost without thinking now; any vaguely noteworthy event garners a veritable mass of cameras and cameraphones. But quantity does not necessarily beget quality, nor does it necessarily enable the photographic eye to sharpen itself. In fact, the digital age has (to a degree) destroyed appreciation for process, thereby relegating craft to an anachronism, a relic of a time when the process of making pictures forced a certain deliberateness in their creation.

So Many Snapshots

When I got my first DSLR, I went through the typical "everything is interesting" phase of photography: I photographed the decrepit rose bush outside my building, some very uninteresting street shots, literally every mediocre Cleveland sunset for two weeks straight, any building that looked remotely interesting, etc. In some sense, this was good for me; I became more intuitive with my camera's functions, I began to understand the exposure triangle, I even took my camera out of auto mode – aperture priority! 

In another sense, though, this did absolutely nothing for me; in fact, it hindered me. I started habitually pointing my camera at everything and shooting. I had no sense of taste about it, no discerning nature to my eye. I was taking pictures for the sake of taking pictures. My Lightroom library was chock full of snapshots – snapshots taken with a decent camera, but snapshots nonetheless. That changed one day, though.

As per usual, I took my camera with me to the farm to visit my horse. I did my normal thing of taking pictures of an old tractor, because hey, it was an old tractor, and being borderline annoying with my incessant clicking. Then, I finally had the eureka moment that shook loose the hold of my spray and pray style. I turned my horse out with a horse with whom he had not been in a pasture before. In a usual show of dominance, the two briefly fought for who was going to be the boss. As I saw this happening, I can only describe what happened next as my sympathetic nervous system taking over for my brain that had long been on autopilot. Without thinking (I don't even remember picking up the camera), I saw the action unfolding in front of me and fired off a shot.

It's not a great shot. I keep it because it's my horse, and I love him, but it's clearly not something I would put in a portfolio. Everything that could be technically wrong with it pretty much is. In fact, much like all my shots that came before it, it's a snapshot. Nonetheless, it's not like all my shots that came before it. I had discovered some previously unseen sides of the equation: the when and the what. 

There's More to This

Up until this point, I had been working on the how of taking a photo: light, exposure parameters, etc. I could tell you with some modicum of proficiency how shutter speed and aperture interacted, what ISO did, etc., but I had no grasp of the what and how; really, I was somewhat oblivious to their role. I was pointing my camera at everything; it didn't matter what the subject matter was. Nowadays, I would argue that with some creativity and inventive thinking, almost anything can make for a compelling photograph, but that wasn't my thought process. Mine was: "it exists, and I have a camera; therefore, I will photograph it." How could I expect to make something interesting to the viewer when I myself wasn't looking for something interesting? Sure, I might luck into it on occasion, but relying on luck does not create consistency. 

Perhaps the most nebulous, though, was the when. Whereas I could learn technical aptitude in a relatively tangible way, and I could find subject matter that would likely be interesting at some point, knowing when to actually take the shot was something I hadn't trained myself to do at all. It showed in my pitiful street photography attempts. I remember one time in which I photographed a student longboarding down a hill in my neighborhood. It's an entirely uninteresting shot; it's someone on a longboard in the street. Big whoop. Had I read the scene and not been busy chimping my shot, I would have captured what happened maybe three seconds later: a car cut into his path, and he narrowly avoided being hit in rather spectacular fashion. That would have been a shot. Alas.

The shot of my horse showed the what and the when. Horses can be great subject matter, and I had captured them in an interesting moment. Unfortunately, my tenuous technical footing went out the window when faced with a quick challenge. That's ok, though; it was worth the discovery. It made me remember what it was like to shoot growing up. I had a Canon Rebel film camera. I would frequently point it at almost anything, much like I did with my DSLR, but rarely would I actually take a picture. I was a kid with a weekend farm job. I couldn't afford to run 30 rolls through my camera every week without thought. I had to learn to choose what to photograph and when to photograph it. Looking back through shoeboxes of prints, my keeper rate was certainly much higher back then than it was in my early digital days. 

Film taught process, and it taught discernment. The tragedy of digital is the loss of the latter. When there's no real upper limit on quantity, there's no perceived need to hone the eye. But of course, the downside is that the ability to truly read or craft a scene falls by the wayside, and without that, so too does the ability to craft a memorable image. I'm not looking to get into a film vs. digital debate here; though, I will say I believe in the merits of patience film instills. There's no reason we can't learn that same patience with digital, but it takes awareness, and it takes discipline. You can see the shift in the paradigm in how people talk about images online. Every image has a barrage of questions on the how: "How did you light it? How did you tone it? How did you get that perspective?" I can't remember the last time someone asked "Why did you choose this subject? Why did you choose to take the shot at that moment?" And yet, those aspects have to be in place long before we ever decide how to make an image should we want to make something worth looking at. 

Nowadays, I take a much more disciplined approach. I know that one good frame is far superior to ten forgettable captures. I spend much more time reading a scene than putting my eye to the viewfinder. I can work on the how anytime I want; that's the advantage of the Internet. But to master the what and the when? That takes a more internally focused, investigative attitude. It's something I still work on constantly and will never be satisfied with. But I know now that great photography happens only when the what, when, and how all coincide. There can be no compromise in that.