The End of the Beginning

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

—Albert Einstein

Before you ever press the shutter, there must be something that moves you to do so. If you are not moved, you will not move others. See the image in your mind’s eye in its completed form, and make your captures so that the experience of time will be an element in your final print. Then, when you take your captures to your computer, try to re-create your original vision, removing everything that doesn’t conform to that vision. Do not try to make a memorable image out of a capture made casually, even if it was a happy accident.

If you have read all that has preceded this, you know that a still camera’s limitations are also its power. John Paul Caponigro has said, “The camera is what I use to hold the world still.” And this isn’t “hold” in the sense of tying something down. That’s too often the case with people who feel that all photographs must be posed and the subject must stay completely still. “Sit, move your head to left. ... No, too much, okay, hold that. Place your hand under your chin. ... Stop. ... Hold that, don’t move.” Shooting that way produces images so devoid of life and time that they are eminently forgettable.

You should want to create images that feel as if they are about to move or were caught as if they were already in motion. I’ll say it one more time: A still photograph is called a still photograph because the picture doesn’t move, not because the objects in the picture are not in motion. You can capture motion with stillness and, in that moment, hold time still, but yet experience the feeling of its passing.

There is a quote often attributed to the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.” If your final print encompasses the experience of life moving forward, that image will allow your viewer to understand it backward.