Making photographs

It has been a while! 

In the 6 months since I last posted, I’ve made a lot of photographs. By “making photographs” I mean to distinguish the photographic image as captured in the camera, (on film or card) from the photographic print that’s made in a darkroom or with an inkjet printer.

Wading and watching as Hurricane Arthur approaches.

But really what I’m trying to do is get away from the language of “shooting” and “going on a shoot” and so on. I’ve never liked it for its coarseness but used it for its convenience if for no other reason than because everyone else says it. I could have said, “I’ve been doing a lot of shooting recently” and that would have been enough. And you would have been spared those last few sentences. 

It’s true that making photographs can take on the nature of a shoot. I’ve been on plenty of them, especially in my earlier days working as a photojournalist. Photography as hunting prey, be it person, place, or thing. Some photographers go so far with the metaphor as to talk about “bagging one” after a successful shoot.

I don’t own a gun, I’m not a fan of the NRA, and I'm tired of hearing about my so-called Second Amendment right to own a private arsenal. But that’s not what this is about. The language of the shoot is coarse, for sure, but more critically, “shooting photographs,” sounds too mechanistic to me. Essentially, it leaves all but the photographer's trigger finger out of the image making process. 

That famous quote about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers comes to mind. The one about how Ginger had to do all the steps that Fred did except backwards and in heels. Photographers have to make the same kinds of preliminary decisions that a painter makes regarding light and other atmospheric decisions, about composition (without the ability to move the parts around within the frame like painters can). And we do it all in a fraction of a second! The ultimate Impressionists!

And that’s what I mean by “making photographs.”