Ray Sachs
Legend
- Location
- Not too far from Philly
- Name
- you should be able to figure it out...
Who the hell needs vision when we live in such an interesting world. Unless you are doing commercial work, 99.99% of vision comes after the fact the image is made. The only vision I need is to be able to see. I think this idea of the "photographer's vision" has been one of the biggest blocks to creativity. It gives something for writers to wax poetic over, but photography is just a lot of hard work resulting in many more failures in order to get something that works.
I disagree pretty strongly. It's one thing to just look at the world and take a picture "of" something, figuring whatever that thing is will be enough to make the photograph interesting or good. Usually it's not enough. You have to be able to visualize how the shapes and lines and shades and shadows all come together within the frame to make an image that's interesting or beautiful or otherwise impactful beyond the mere recording of the subject itself. Maybe there's an interesting mountain over there - 100 people may take a photograph of it and in most of them you'll barely know what the photograph is featuring. But a few of them will pick a focal length and frame the shot in a way that adds impact to the basic "thing" and catch the light so that shadows may add some shape or texture to the image, and THOSE images will have an impact and beauty far beyond the mere facsimiles of the mountain in the other photos. Sure, the process of looking for the image rather than just the "picture" takes work and sweat and experimentation and more failures than successes. But that doesn't make the ability to ultimately "see" or "visualize" images rather than just "take pictures" any less important. We all have to take a lot of really boring photos before we start to see what makes them boring and what makes the occasional good one NOT boring and then we start looking for those things that make it work and we still take plenty of boring shots, but maybe a few more good ones too. But without that effort, it's all just takin' snapshots.
Every now and then I'll find an image after the photo is clicked and turn it into something with a bit of cropping and PP. but most of the time, if I don't see how an image comes together in the frame before I hit the shutter button, there isn't gonna be anything worth looking at after I shoot it.