Photography is a high. The magic that some of those first images a photographer takes is difficult to put into words. The joy that comes from image-making hooks you, and often, there is no turning back.
The feeling of making something that you have never made before or trying a technique you haven’t tried before is unexplainable. It is a bit of a double-edged sword, though, in that the more you practice photography, the better you get at it (great!), but it also means that it becomes harder and harder to make better and better images.
I know for me, I was getting a bit jaded with making images on digital cameras for this very reason. I know I can make a good image easily; making a great image is much harder. This is why I think side-tracking a little bit either this way or that way and learning a different facet of photography is one of the best things you can do. Break the rut, so to speak.
In this video, Ray Espinoza does something I’ve started doing recently too: he’s started making images on a large format film camera. He admits that he’s not super happy with some of these early images, but that’s not what this video is about though. There are so many little fiddly things to learn and remember when trying something new that it is more about learning the process than the end goal of making something good. It’s about trying something and learning something and putting it into praxis so that you get better and better at it.
In the comments, I’d be keen to know what some things are you are learning to do in regards to your photography?
