let's talk about improvement...

"Years ago, I concluded that ... one needed to love the subject matter even more than photography. ...--."

amen

Darlings,

It is, and only ever will be, about the people involved.

Bob and Emraphoto you have hit the nail precisely..

Ciao,
Mme. O.
 
I used to love going into Head Photo in Gateshead, a small shop with a wall of film to choose from, really miss those days and that shop
 
I've been analyzing myself along these lines a fair amount lately, and I have a couple of working hypotheses right now. Mostly I'm thinking:

1.
I need to look at my photos afterwards more carefully. Time of shooting is a bad time to make decisions about what photos we like and share with others. Digital encourages this bad habit, film disciplined us to take a certain amount of time between the shooting experience and the viewing experience to shake out our residual cloudiness caused by the actual experience of shooting. Feelings brought on by the shooting will inevitably fade, feelings we have for the subject shot and the way we captured it will continue on. I'm all for shooting for me, but I want to prioritize photos that will have a lasting impact for me.

2.
Photography today I believe encourages us to think of singular images, and even further to think of a singular subject. The end result is photos with only one object of interest. I don't believe photography is the best genre for this kind of imagery, however. Photography lends itself particularly well to series, and the way different iterations and treatments of subjects, or different subjects with some connection, exist with one another. I need to look for photos to be part of series, or for a single photo I want there to be multiple things going on, if possible, just to bring more life and lingering thoughtfulness on the part of the viewer. These photos are hard to find, impossible to construct. They depend on luck and alertness. The rest of the time, I want to concentrate on photos which will work as a series or sequence.

Just where I'm at, now.
 
To become a photographer, start with film and a film camera. Using film requires thinking about every shot. No going home to your computer and Photo Shop to enhance or remove your mistakes.


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To find more about your photography or the style:
Shoot all what you can using a Film camera. Then leave those films developed and put aside for a considerable time just without thinking or looking at them.. In a Shoe box archive is a good place. Keep shooting continuously. "Let them cook for some times". So after many years you go back to them and start looking at them. Scan them. Make Contact proof to categorise them in themes. or as series.
All possible similar shots will give you what is called a STYLE or you can even name them " MY STYLE OF PHOTOGRAPHY" .
You can recognise/choose many photography as high potential and you can edit your own photos as a very strong series. This is because all your photos are cooked and separated from all your EMOTIONAL BINDS THAT YOU HAD TO THEM, WHEN YOU MADE THEM. As those binds are gone now after ageing, you have god consciousness to choose how you want them to be. I did my work that way. I have lot of work in developed in rolls. Many exposed rolls in a fridge to develop etc. This I learned from someone and it taught me how to add and select my work as different series.

As in the digital era you can do the same way. Keep shooting anything you find and save in to a hard disk and go back to them very late when you have a lot of work. It works.
So when you have those series together somebody will say WOOOW ... I LIKE YOUR STYLE. Actually your style dose not exist if that similarity come out regularly threw many photo in you your work.
 
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