I've been in a muddle the last several weeks.
After judging at a couple of local camera clubs' competitions I received a couple of invitations to speak and the preferred topic was street shooting.
I looked back at the presentations I've given and everything I've said before rings a bit superficial to me.
My favorite analogy of the difficulty of photography is this one:
There is one specific kind of fishing that maps so interestingly onto a niche in photography that the examination of the fishing can actually inform the awareness of the issues of photography – and that area is fly fishing and its photographic equivalent of street shooting.
A novice fly fisherman generally approaches that sport niche without too much knowledge yet most believe that the primary issue is the equipment. Indeed there is a huge complexity in equipment, different lengths and weights of rod, different flexibilities that demand the use of different weight line, because it is the line not the lure that provides the weight and momentum to be cast.
Then there is the leader, a thinner transparent nylon attached to the end of the line, tippets of even lighter, more invisible nylon and then of course the flies matched to the season, the manner of fishing and even the virtually unknowable appetite of the fish.
The necessity to make decisions about what to get is almost overwhelming and yet required. Inevitably what one gets to start is, in some way, just as inevitably wrong and replaced. (I have 5 or 6 fly rods and some matching reels and lines, bought at different levels of involvement; each one slightly different but sharing an increasing cost.)
Once the new fisherman is suitably outfitted with waders and vest, with the rod and attachments only partially listed above and has even learned one or more variations on how to cast, he or she steps to the edge of the water and suddenly realizes one thing. All of this preparation, everything, does not make him or her a fisherman, it only prepares him or her to start to learn how to fish.
What he/she sees is water, usually moving, in all its various possible bumps, dips, hollows and planes. There are no signs, no flashing beacons that say, 'fish here, use this specific fly and in this specific size, then cast your line here, there is a trout waiting.' It is up the to the fisherman now to learn to read the water, to understand the environment and to place him/herself in the best position to put his fly so that, if a fish is there, the fish can strike at the lure.
And there is no certainty, no matter the amount of effort or the interest or the time expended, that any specific person will even get a strike because that is really up to the fish.
And further there is no certainty, no matter the amount of effort or the time expended or the interest or the desire that any specific person will ever get to be a 'great' fisherman.
Surely he or she might, by dint of repetition, improve but there is some ephemeral, unteachable talent that will, just like in photography, allow a person to be somehow better at this activity than his or her peers."
It is easy enough to tell people about the facts and the skills, but when it comes down to it, I don't think there is any way to teach someone to take great pictures.
You can cut out some of the stupid mistakes and you can give them some pointers to miss a few potholes on their journey but, whether they get to make great pictures is unknowable.
Years ago, I would routinely take people on to shoot events, etc and not one of these people ever got beyond OK. (in my opinion, that is)
I used to get frustrated at the photography I would see in shows, 99.99% of which was unoriginal.
Eventually I accepted the fact, that doing photography for external praise or recognition would always be a losing endeavor and somehow I changed until I was shooting only for myself, for the act of creation. I like it if people like my pictures, I don't care if they don't.
I don't have any rules for myself about lenses, editing, cropping, framing - I will do anything to make the image match the one in my mind's eye.
And perhaps that is the real point.
If you don't have the kind of mind that sees the interesting scene, the meaningful scene, the emotional scene,
if you don't have the kind of mind that can isolate that instant and capture it, if you don't have the objectivity to see the gap between what the camera gives and what you have conceived, you'll never be good at making good or great pictures.
