“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” Robert Frost
In my workshops I talk about feeling a place before you photograph it. In fact we do an exercise. When we arrive at the location I ask the participants to leave their cameras in the car for at least fifteen minutes and just quietly wander around the area until it speaks to them. Only then can they get their cameras and try to capture what they are feeling.
This is a wonderful way of slowing down and getting in touch with the essence of a place.
But I must confess it doesn’t always work that way for me.
While I prefer to take the slow, meaningful approach all too often I get caught up in the urgency of the moment. After all, for we landscape photographers often the light lasts mere seconds. So I sorta go on auto pilot and snap away. I’ll try different compositions, one after the other, with the plan of sorting it all out when I get home. It’s a concept I call “bracketing the composition.”
But the other thing about this whole deal is I often think of the digital darkroom process as being like a sculptor who releases the statue from within the block of marble. Or the author who has the novel take over and doesn’t know where it will take her.
Often I feel I too discover the photograph in the image. People ask me if I have a pretty good idea of what I want when I press the shutter. And occasionally I do and am fortunate enough to get it. But so often the shooting becomes, well, I don’t want to call it mechanical because I don’t think it is, but it’s not as thoughtful of a process as I might like.
But often as I work on the image something unexpected starts to emerge. And the potential becomes more and more apparent. At times I feel the image tells me what it wants to say. In fact, some times we’ve had a bit of a tug of war, the image and me. And it wasn’t until I stopped fighting it and listened to what it wanted that we ended up with a successful photograph.
Say what you will about pre-visualization, the making of a photograph often is a process of exciting discovery. Hence the quote by Robert Frost. If it doesn’t move me it won’t move you. And if it doesn’t surprise me it wont surprise you.
That’s one of the truly wonderful things about landscape photography. There are so many amazing surprises in your camera just waiting to be released. And it’s such a thrill to discover them and help set them free.
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