My Thoughts on Photography

Document, don’t create

I love film photography, always have. There is just something about the grainy textures and the softness of the subject that draws me into the scenes. Ever since I have been taking pictures, I have been chasing that feeling. I tend to edit my photos to emulate that film aesthetic but there is an extreme disconnect between my two primary cameras (Sony a6000 and the iPhone 15 Pro Max). Both are fantastic cameras and have served me well in multiple situations; the Sony carrying me through college and being my first actual camera body where I think about lens choice and my iPhone for always being on me (even if I don’t document as much as I should be). I do think, however, that there is a real benefit to always carrying a camera with you. It forces your mind to realize that you have this tool with you, a tool whose primary function is to take pictures, to document, to remember mundane activities, and freeze a moment in time. With the iPhone, you can do so many other things. You can scroll Instagram, watch Netflix, surf the web… oh and also take a picture. But with social media now, it has been bastardized into this quick hit of social dopamine by posting quickly on your story without much thought other than “This is sure to make my followers jealous”.

Photography is extremely personal. Certain photographs evoke such an emotional response to where you were when taking the picture, how you took the picture, what mood you wanted to encapsulate when editing the picture, and the thoughts you have years later looking back on the pictures. If you were to show that same picture to someone else, you may get a “cool photo bro” and they will forget 5 minutes later. That is not the case when I look back on my work. I recently went through my photo gallery on both my website and on my iPhone camera roll and can tell you exactly what I was doing, where I was, and what I wanted to accomplish once I hit the shutter button.

Alcatraz Island

December 28, 2022

Over the past couple of years, I haven’t been practicing my photography skills as much as I would have liked. I don’t go for weekly walks, or notice when the light is peaking through the clouds, or notice interesting subjects that others may have seen hundreds of times. I’ve just been going about my day with thoughts racing through my mind only to be quieted by doom-scrolling TikTok and Instagram. It was only when I came upon this TikTok trend titled “The Art of Noticing” that I took a step back and remembered what life was like when I had that camera strapped around my neck every day I stepped out of my house. Noticing beauty in the mundane is one of my favorite artistic motifs and I’ve fully stepped away from that.

Longing for that experience again, YouTube’s algorithm gave me this video from Teo Crawford titled 30-day Photography Challenge wherein for 30 days he goes and takes one photograph a day. Throughout this challenge, he would not be worried about creativity or capturing photos to later be placed in a photo book, simply he would just be documenting his life. Of course, proper photography ideas will still come into mind, proper composition, lighting, color grading, focus, etc. but he just wanted to have a journal of sorts where you can go back and look at these photos and remember your life. The thought is that the best photography practice is to take pictures daily. He notes how throughout this challenge, he took a couple of great photographs, a lot of okay photos, and tons of bad photos. But that didn’t stop him from taking a picture each day.

Tower Bridge, London, England

November 14, 2023

This challenge isn’t supposed to be a “challenge” so to speak, rather it is a mindset to get me back to being consistently aware of my surroundings and what could make an interesting subject for my photography. There may be days when I actually take a picture, there may not. There may be deep insights about what I liked about my photo of the day, going into detail about what I like about the framing, the lighting, and the colors, or I may go radio silent again for a couple of days. That’s okay. As I have said in the beginning, the purpose of this challenge is to document my life for myself, for my future, for my family, for my memories.