What brings you to grab a camera and take a picture? Is it an idea you thought about or a picture the world presented you?
So much visual imagery surrounds us each day. It’s a little overwhelming. From Instagram feeds filling our screens to billboards flashing past our windshield. Magazine ads and iPad pop ups. It’s in your face 24/7. A darkened room with nothing but the sound of the world rushing by is your only refuge.
The inclination to join into the visual conversation is compelling. With a camera never far away these days many of us have the tools to capture every idea we have and everything we see. The world is filling with pictures. The dialog it creates interesting, opinionated, and a little daunting.
But what is the intent when you reach for the icon on a phone or the release button on a camera? Is it something that you saw? Or an idea that you have? That is the fork in the photographic road that determines the path your picture will take and ultimately what you have to say.
One intent is simply found art. Visual consumerism really. Pulling up a viewfinder and scanning the world looking for something interesting to take a picture of. Stumbling upon something beautiful and shooting it. Everyone does it. Documenting what is laying before us within the frame. It’s one way to shoot, but certainly not the only way.
What about shooting the idea you have in your mind ? Not the picture you saw on the drive to work.
It’s this point of view that the camera can become a real tool or even a weapon. Armed with an idea first, the world looks like a much different place with a camera in hand. The photographer overlaying an idea onto the world rather than the world presenting a picture. Premeditation and not simple discovery.
Having an idea takes photography from simple documentation into the avenues of art and commerce where hours are spent conceptualizing what the picture will be well in advance of picking up the camera. It’s this world where much of my time is spent.
Mastering both avenues of intent adds to the diversity of your photography and creates a better photographer. My challenge is to become accomplished at both. Enjoying the freedom of being an unfettered visual consumer and also being able to walk out the door with an idea firmly planted in my mind. Gathering the elements I need to realize it .
The next time you shoot. Think of your intent. Explore the world down both those roads. Push the boundaries of your ideas and see where the camera leads you.
