WHY PHOTOGRAPHY? WHY PHOTOGRAPHS?
Since January 1, 1987, I’ve made a point of taking at least one photograph every day. On days when I’ve taken more than one, sometime many, I choose one to represent that day. A few years ago as I was explaining my photo journal to a friend, he asked if I consider myself a photojournalist. I answered that I thought a photojournalist is someone who takes photographs that can be displayed in journals, magazines, newspapers...for money. I keep a journal, a journal with writing and photographs. I’m not compulsive about writing every day, but I can’t go to sleep at night until I have taken and chosen my photo-du-jour.
The same friend asked why I do it. “Are you trying to say something with the photograph you take every day?” I didn’t have an answer then, but I do now. I’ve been influenced by photographers like Garry Winegrand, who said, “I don’t have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions.” It was also Winegrand who said, “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” He called himself a street photographer. I like to think that’s what I am.
For the first decade of my “habit,” I didn’t go out looking for a picture. I carry a camera everywhere I go, so I’ve always been ready to take a photo when a picture presents itself. For several years I sometimes came to evening having forgotten about the camera and the photograph; but I always remembered before going to bed, and I’d point the camera at something in the house. That never happens anymore. Since I retired and have discretionary time, I go out into the world every day looking for a picture.
Do I ever have two pictures that are so compelling that I can’t choose? When that happens, I still must choose one of them. Only one can be the picture-for-the-day. All others go into a file, a digital file these days. I like having certain rules. Rules keep me alert and focused. They makes me more careful; and I’m more discerning because of my own private set of rules, like the requirement that I must personally press the shutter release. Using the self-timer is permitted, so I can set the timer, press the button, and get in front of the camera if I want to include myself in the picture.
For a few years one of my rules required me to accept what I got without manipulating the photograph in any way in the darkroom, or these days in the computer. I can’t live with that rule anymore. Anyway, darkroom work always required manipulation of some kind. Digital photography has changed everything. I love fooling around with an image using Photoshop.
What do I consider to be a necessary quality of a good photograph. I particularly like an idea that I got from an essay by the art historian and photographer Gerry Badger that the first great quality in photography is “thereness.” Badger’s essay, “The Art That Hides Itself,” is included in a book edited by Thomas Weski and Heinz Liesbrock, How You Look At It (2000, Landeshatuptstadt Hannover). Of course, not all of the photographs I choose for my journal have the “thereness” quality; but it’s something I strive for every day. It’s what I want. I’d like anybody who sees the photograph to want to step into it or to touch it. Garry Winegrand also said, “You can take a good photograph of anything.” I go out every day believing it.
Over the next few days I’m going to post some photographs from the past three years that I particularly like. All of them are taken from the photo-du-jour file. For these BLOG postings, I’ve classified them according subject: animals, people, still life, street art, street people, travel, landscape and flowers. What better place to begin than with animals!
Well, man is an animal... and so is a bird. When I happen on something like a "wild" bird sitting on a man's head, of course I can't resist trying to get the picture. There is an immediacy, a critical moment, a point in time that may never come again, at least for me; so I shoot and hope for the best. Remember, you can always see a larger, clear version of these photographs by clicking on them.
For me there is something unreal about this photograph perhaps because I don't know what kind of fish these are. I particularly like the fact that they seem like fish-bowl fish that have grown monstrously large. When I saw the image later, I also liked the fact that the man was looking away. That bit was just luck, not skill. I wonder what the picture would be like if he had been looking directly at the camera, but I suspect that I wouldn't like the photograph as much as I do.
Before a cicada turns into the bug-eyed, noisy insect found by the billions periodically along the Eastern part of the United States, it lives for seven years in the earth from which it emerges on a warm summer day, climbs up a tree, and develops a brittle shell from which it breaks free in a matter of hours. I am awestruck whenever I witness it.
I've never seen a bird I didn't like...to photograph. I found this tiny hummingbird in its nest above a church door. I learned that hummingbirds won't stay around a place that has no spiders because it needs spider web to make its nest.
I've shot hundreds of pictures of flamingoes, and there's something wrong with most of them. There was something right about these two.
I've probably had more responses to this photograph than to any other that I've ever taken. It's technically not very good. It was taken using a small, point-and-shoot olympus I always bring along when I'm out on my bicycle. I guess it's the anthropomorphic quality of a squirrel scratching its back against a flower stalk that makes us take a second look.
Its the symmetry that makes this photograph work.
This picture might not please me as much if the guy on the right had been looking up. Its also very easy to identify with meercats. They almost always seem like people.
Malachi is impressive against any background, but the shirt that David was wearing makes just about anybody stop and give it a second look. It's that "something" that compels a second look that I'm looking for in a photograph. It's the "thereness" factor.
I don't particularly like snakes up close and personal... except in a photograph. The Burmese python lives at the San Diego zoo in a glass enclosure. I just happened to be holding my camera lens against the glass when he opened his mouth. I was lucky. Being in the right place at the right time has almost everything to do with good photography. 
I've taken lots of pictures of zebras; but unless a group of them are clustered in just the right arrangement the image never seems right. This close-up is better than a picture of all of the animal would have been.
These two photos of orangutans were not taken on the same day, but they seem to belong together. I can imagine the pregnant female is looking back at the male wondering why she got herself into this condition.
It's usually not the composition that makes a dog picture just ordinary or a good one. These dogs have attitude. It's also obviously anthropomorphism that shapes our responses to dogs.
Any time a reflection in calm water makes a double image, the chances are good that the photograph will be more interesting than a single image would be.
Fish and birds, color and motion. It's not easy to get birds in flight; and unless the photographer is underwater, it's difficult to get a good photograph of fish swimming.
In a salt-water vat, these blue crabs were alive and squirming in an Asian fish market. It's the random nature of the composition that makes the photograph an abstraction worth examining.
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