05

Exploration and Expression

THE IDEAS THAT FOLLOW are not a recipe to follow, nor are they an inventory of effects to be pulled from our back pockets when other ideas have run dry. They are not even a how-to manual. If anything, they are intended as a focus on the why-to, as a list of the possibilities and the endless combinations of devices at the photographer’s disposal, all of them aspects of the final photograph to which we respond, in which we find meaning, and which make the image what it is. The ideas that follow offer a strong start in discovering the ways in which, through our creativity and rigor, we can find our subjects’ best expression in the final image.

But determining the best expression of a subject is often not easy. Nor is it always immediate. I think it’s the rare photographer who consistently puts the camera to their eye already knowing exactly what the photograph is about and how to best interpret that within the frame. If that’s you, skip ahead to the next chapter while the rest of us talk about the creative process for a moment.

The camera is an astonishing tool of expression, but before that, for many of us, it is also a means of exploration. Most of us take many captures to get to the final frame that lights something up on the inside for us or accomplishes our intention or vision (however preliminary or vague that may be). Many of us begin with less of a vision and more of a curiosity, a sense of, “Hey, look at that.” If you’re like me, you certainly don’t remotely know what the final photograph, if there is to be one at all, will look like. Some people do. I am not like them. I wrestle with my muse. I say unkind things about her under my breath while I do so. For me, it is a process, and that process begins with picking up the camera and making sketch images. Images that almost certainly won’t make the final cut, but that allow me to warm up, take some risks, and try combinations of the visual devices that I’ll spend the rest of the book discussing.

Sometimes we don’t know what we want to say. Often, it is only by putting the camera to our faces and making those sketches, seeing not only what the camera sees, but how, that helps us arrive there. We often need to try new points of view in order to move the lines around before we press the shutter and collapse three dimensions into two. We need to move to see the light from new angles or try different exposures in order to make the image look the way that most excites us, not just the way the camera wants it to look.

This process is not just normal; it’s good. It’s vital that you take risks, that you consider multiple possibilities, that you get past the obvious first choices in composition and technique. If it takes you a dozen (or a couple hundred) frames to get there, there is no shame in using the camera to fully explore a scene. In fact, the only shame is in not doing what you need to do in order to get to the image that achieves what you finally discover you want it to. For me, that means being open to not always knowing what I want and to using questions to figure it out.

Few things are better for the creative process than good questions. Questions call us forward to new possibilities and are often only answered by trying out those possibilities. What, for example, would this scene look like if I moved around until it was backlit? What would it look like if I reduced my exposure and allowed the people to become silhouettes? What would it feel like if I used a wider lens and got in tight? While doing all these things, in the back of the mind I’m asking, “What’s this image really about for me, and am I getting closer to that or farther away?”

If it sounds like there are a lot of things going on in the brain all at once, there often are. But with time, these things begin to feel intuitive, and you begin to trust your gut more. I’m not suggesting you overthink your way into paralysis, just that you understand that there are a tremendous number of possibilities. The more willing you are to explore them and let them guide you to more clearly understanding your true subject and get you closer to expressing that subject in a way that feels right to you, the closer you’ll be to making the kinds of photographs that are not just good, but yours.

The chapters that follow are not only about questions; they are also invitations to having a more open and receptive creative process, a way of making photographs that allows for one decision to lead to another, rather than bowing to the pressure to get it right all at once. Not every question will be relevant to every scene or purpose. And not everything that makes a meaningful photograph is represented here, though I’ve tried to be thorough. What is most important is remembering that it is in the combinations of these questions and the willingness to risk answering them in unexpected ways that will bring the greatest rewards.