Step 1 in slow photography is spending a long time studying the subject. As one guide enjoins, "pay more attention to your subject than to your camera." That's an order to actually use your eyes. [...] When you look carefully and avoid trying to label what you see, you inevitably start to notice things that you mightn't have otherwise.
"If Step 1 is a long consideration of the subject, Step 2 is the exercise of creative choices—the greatest pleasure that our automatic cameras rob us of. What should be in the frame and what should be excluded is the most obvious decision, but there's also exposure, depth of field, and more technical choices beyond that. [...] Yet these choices are, to my mind, the whole game. They are what individualizes photography, what puts the stamp of your personality on the photo."
I have to say that the view camera rotation by the nature of the equipment provides a glimpse at the whole slow-photography experience. Alas, like the essay says, since it has become more accessible, photography has become more of a method of documentation- a sort of reminder to ourselves ("Oh, that's what that room looked like." "Our family is so big! When did we have that many people?") of little memories, instead of primarily an art medium.
ReplyDelete