Feeling like your life isn't interesting enough to photograph is one of the most common reasons people stop shooting. It's also one of the most fixable.
Coming to you from Max Kent, this thoughtful video makes a case for treating your ordinary, everyday life as the actual subject of your photography. Kent opens by admitting he spent years feeling like he needed to be somewhere else, somewhere like New York or Los Angeles, before his photos could mean anything. The turning point came when he discovered the philosophy of William Eggleston, the photographer famous for shooting mundane suburban life in Tennessee and turning it into some of the most celebrated color photography ever made. Eggleston called it "shooting democratically," the idea that no subject is inherently more worthy than another. Kent traces how that concept reshaped not just how he thinks about photography, but how he thinks about his own life.
One of the sharper points in the video is about location and effort. When you're somewhere visually spectacular, like Italy on holiday, Kent argues photography is essentially on easy mode. Everything looks good with minimal work. But when you're back home in a gray, unremarkable place, you actually have to learn to see. That friction forces a different kind of skill, one that carries over when you do find yourself somewhere beautiful. It's not a comforting idea, but it's an honest one. Kent also pushes back against the instinct to delay projects until you're somewhere "worth shooting," pointing out that the stories around you right now, neighbors, family, your actual neighborhood, are already there waiting.
What makes Kent's argument land is that it's grounded in his own experience rather than abstract advice. He talks about shooting the light coming through his window, being a passenger in a car, dealing with a bathroom renovation. None of it sounds glamorous, and that's the point. He's not telling you to settle. He's pointing out that the photographers whose work endures often made it from exactly the kind of ordinary circumstances most people dismiss. Eggleston didn't wait to move to a more photogenic city. He shot the suburbs of Memphis and changed how the world sees color photography.
The video also gets into the psychology of comparison, specifically the habit of holding back because someone else has already done a similar project or taken a similar photo. Kent's take on that is blunt and worth hearing in full. He also lays out several concrete ways to start, from daily lunch break shoots to neighborhood documentary projects, none of which require travel, expensive gear, or an especially eventful life. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Kent.
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5 Comments
Taking your camera out into the back streets and alleys around town looking for mundane subjects can be kind of fun, but don't expect anyone else to really like or appreciate your photographs. There's a reason why iconic locations are brimming with photographers lined up taking the same pictures. It's because that's what feels and looks emotionally pleasing to both the photographer and the viewer of the image. My pictures of ordinary mundane subjects garner a collective yawn. It's largely an endeavor for self-gratification only. Indeed, most of the time I've gone out to purposely shoot the mundane was because I was bored sitting around the house. Boxes waiting to be recycled behind Walmart....
The key to taking interesting photos isn't about photographing in iconic or interesting locations but how the photographer sees their environment and how they can photograph it in a way that catches people's attention. Iconic places aren't a guarantee you will come away with photographs that will garner lots of praise. Saul Leiter took his colour photos in the 1950's around his local New York neighbourhood and managed to capture photos that are regarded as iconic. He didn't need to travel to iconic places to capture the same photos as everyone else. I've seen plenty of photos of the Taj Mahal that proves simply turning up to an iconic place won't guarantee your photos don't suck. It is a myth or maybe just a misplaced belief you need to go to iconic places to capture meaningful photos.
I agree that a great location doesn't guarantee a great photograph, and ordinary subjects can be presented in a visually interesting way. However, most of Saul Leiter's 1950s street photos of NY were largely unknown and unappreciated by the public until late in his life. He was a successful fashion photographer for the better part of his career, and undoubtedly shot what his publishers and magazine readers wanted to see. And that's the thing about evaluating street photos such as his, or other mundane photos of that era such as those of Eggleston, or even our images today... they're generally of a lot more interest from a historical perspective than they were when the images were made.
Saul isn't appreciated solely from just a historic perspective though. Most photo artists in the 50's and subsequent decades dismissed colour and considered it not to be a serious medium for art. Saul was simply ahead of his time plus it's not uncommon for it to take some time before a photographers artistic work is fully appreciated. Success creating art is rarely immediate.
I don't think I have that much time left on this earth. I also doubt that anything in the way of photography today will be considered revolutionary in the same degree color evolved out of black and white in the 60s. Maybe AI, although AI motivates a lot of people like myself to going back in time rather than forward. I've pretty well recently adopted black and white as my favorite type of photography... full circle from the 50s except without the film.