Tag: photography articles

The Philosophy of Photography: What the Camera Teaches Us

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I didn’t plan this series when I sat down to write the first part. I thought I had one post in me about why I bother with a camera at all, and then I kept finding more questions underneath that one. Seven parts later, here’s roughly what I’ve landed on, plus what surprised me about writing it down in the first place.

The question I started with, why photograph at all, turned out not to have one answer. Some days it’s about keeping a record. Some days it’s closer to therapy, a way of getting out of my own head for an hour. Writing that part made me notice how much the reason shifts depending on my mood before I’ve even picked up the camera, which I hadn’t really clocked until I tried to explain it to someone else.

The emotional side surprised me more than I expected. I went into that post thinking I’d talk about composition and technique, and instead ended up telling a story about an A-level music essay and a teacher tearing my taste in Glenn Miller to shreds. Photography and music turned out to be doing the same job for me: reciting the text and then letting go of what anyone makes of it.

Storytelling was the one I found easiest to write, probably because I already think in contact sheets, whole rolls rather than single frames. Identity was the hardest. Writing about whether a camera reveals who you are meant admitting things I don’t love admitting, like the fact I’ve picked up more from YouTube than from thirty years of just going out and shooting. Connection reminded me how much of this supposedly solitary hobby actually happens because of other people: my kids as reluctant first models, a Nantes meet-up where I brought the smallest camera in the group, a photography collective that’s shown me the same streets through completely different eyes.

And impermanence, the last one before this, is probably the part I think about most now, weeks after writing it. Every photo is proof that a moment is already gone. I used to find that a bit bleak. Somewhere in writing it out I stopped finding it bleak and started finding it more like the whole point.

So, what’s actually changed for me, having written all this down? Not much on the surface. I still go out with the same cameras, still get annoyed at the same mistakes. But I think I’m a bit more honest with myself now about why I press the shutter when I do, and a bit less bothered when the reason doesn’t sound impressive.

If any of this made you think about your own reasons for picking up a camera, good. I’m not expecting anyone to agree with all seven parts, I don’t think I fully agree with all seven parts. If you want to tell me where you think I’ve got it wrong, the comments are open, and I mean that as a genuine invitation rather than a polite sign-off. I’ll read them properly.

Also in this series: Part I — An Introduction  ·  Part II — Why Do We Photograph?  ·  Part III — The Emotions of Photography  ·  Part IV — The Art of Storytelling  ·  Part V — Identity & Self-Expression  ·  Part VI — Connection Through Photography  ·  Part VII — The Philosophy of Impermanence  ·  Conclusion

Photography Philosophy – Part VII – The Philosophy of Impermanence

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A moment you can’t get back

The second you name a moment, it’s already gone. Not the present any more, the past, and there’s no getting it back or repeating it. You can try to recreate it, same spot, same light, same people, but it will never be identical. Time’s already moved on to the next thing. Photography is the strange art of grabbing hold of that moment anyway, knowing full well it can’t be exactly reproduced.

So what do you do with that, as a photographer? Spend your time mourning everything that’s already slipped past, or feel lucky you managed to catch some of it on the way? I go back and forth. Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment is really just this idea dressed up in French. Like comedy, apparently, photography is mostly timing. Do you freeze the action with a fast shutter, or slow down and let some blur and motion into the frame? How fleeting is what you’re actually chasing, and what does a bit of movement add to it?

My own version of this

Over the years I’ve got better at noticing these moments and trying to hold onto them, especially with my kids, especially when they’re playing together and don’t know I’m watching. I want the mess and the spontaneity of it, not a posed version. Any parent will tell you the same thing: they grow up while you’re not looking properly, and then one day you are looking properly, at old photos, thinking where did that go. My son’s 25 now. My daughter’s 15. I still don’t quite believe either number.

Learning to live with mistakes

I’ll be honest, I don’t take to mistakes easily. I like precision, I like planning a shot properly, I don’t enjoy leaving things to chance, so when something goes wrong there’s a proper flash of frustration. A blurred frame, blown highlights, a moment I simply missed. Those are the things I try hardest to avoid, and mostly fail to avoid.

But looking back over what I’ve actually shot, the path to a photo I’m proud of was never a straight line. It’s trial and error the whole way, learning to see a scene not just through the lens but through everything I got wrong trying to shoot it the first time.

It’s usually the misfires that make me rethink what I’m doing, shift the frame, check the focus again. They show me an angle I wouldn’t have tried, or drag out a feeling I wasn’t expecting to capture at all. Each mistake teaches me something, even when I’d rather it hadn’t needed teaching. They’re not really setbacks. More like uncomfortable nudges toward seeing the same photograph with slightly fresher eyes.

The photo I end up keeping is almost never the first frame, or the second, or the third. It’s whatever’s left after a run of adjustments and false starts and moments of thinking this isn’t working. Take those out of the process and I’m not sure the image I actually wanted would ever have turned up.

So yes, I still want control. I’m not pretending otherwise. But I’ve come round to thinking there’s something in the unexpected too, the mistakes, the missed shots, the ones I got completely wrong. That’s as much a part of my photography as anything I planned properly, and it usually gets me closer to whatever it was I was actually trying to say with the picture.

Where that leaves me

Photography, when I strip away the gear talk and the technique, is really just an attempt to hold onto something that’s already leaving. Every photo I take is an admission that the moment won’t come back, and somehow that doesn’t feel morbid to me, it feels closer to the point. You’re documenting not only what you saw but roughly what it felt like to be the one holding the camera.

I still want the shot to be right. I still get annoyed when it isn’t. But I’ve stopped expecting the process to be tidy, because it never has been, not once, not for me. The mess is where most of the good ones come from anyway. If that’s the trade, catching a moment you can’t keep in exchange for never quite controlling how you catch it, I’ll take it. I don’t see another option, really, and thirty-odd years in I’ve stopped wanting one.

Also in this series: Part I — An Introduction  ·  Part II — Why Do We Photograph?  ·  Part III — The Emotions of Photography  ·  Part IV — The Art of Storytelling  ·  Part V — Identity & Self-Expression  ·  Part VI — Connection Through Photography  ·  Part VII — The Philosophy of Impermanence  ·  Conclusion

A photography Philosophy – Part III – The Emotions of Photography

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Emotion first

Let me tell you about an essay my music teacher set us at the start of A level. There were four of us doing music, and the lessons happened in his study, more like an Oxbridge tutorial than a classroom. The brief: describe the perfect piece of music.

Back then I picked Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade. One of the others picked Holst’s The Planets. When we got our essays back, the master tore mine apart. Repetitive, no real musical merit, corny, he said. I argued back that it didn’t matter, because of how the piece made me feel.

Looking back I should have handed in a blank sheet with a note saying there’s no such thing as a perfect piece of music, taste is entirely subjective, and maybe he should rethink the question. I didn’t, obviously. Seventeen year olds rarely have that kind of nerve. But it stuck with me. Still does, decades later.

Subjectivity, and why photography isn’t literature

Same goes for any art. What the viewer takes from it is entirely subjective, and you have to be careful reading your own meaning into somebody else’s reaction. Literature can hide fairly obvious themes if you go looking for them. Photography’s different, I think. Whatever connection someone has with a photograph, it’s emotional first. Everything else, the composition, the technique, the references, comes after.

What my horn teacher told me

So what actually makes that emotional connection happen, and how do I try to engineer it? I keep coming back to something my horn teacher in France used to say. Your concerto is your text, he’d tell me. Your job is to recite that text to the audience, that’s all you need to think about. You’ve done the work, learned the technique, and the moment the sound leaves the bell of the instrument it isn’t yours any more. It belongs to whoever’s listening. They’re the ones who decide what it means to them.

Photography works the same way for me, portraits especially. The old advice is to focus on the eyes, because apparently that’s the door into the soul or whatever. Corny, but true enough. If I can get my model looking straight down the lens at me, and therefore at whoever’s looking at the photo afterwards, I’m most of the way to a portrait that actually lands.

Kate, my daughter
On the street

Street photography’s a different game. Sometimes it’s just about catching the one detail everyone walked past without noticing, and hoping somebody sees it in the photo afterwards even though they missed it in real life. If you want the technical side of that, leading lines, rule of thirds, all of it, I’ve got tutorials on the site that go into it properly. This isn’t that post.

Colour, or the lack of it

Colour does a lot of the emotional lifting too, whether I mean it to or not. Warm tones, reds, oranges, tend to feel energetic or inviting. Cooler blues and greens slow things down, make an image feel calmer, more like you’re supposed to sit with it. I try to think about this while I’m shooting rather than fixing it afterwards in Lightroom. It’s not scientific. It’s more like deciding the mood before you’ve even framed the shot.

Black and white strips all of that out, which is exactly why I love it, on film or digital, doesn’t matter which. Without colour you’re left with texture, shadow, contrast. Somehow that can hit just as hard, sometimes harder. There’s something about a black and white image that feels outside of time to me. Nostalgic, maybe. Or just quiet.

None of this works if I’m rushing, though. Half the time the difference between a photo I keep and one I bin is whether I stepped back for a second before pressing the shutter. Sounds obvious written down. Doesn’t stop me forgetting it constantly.

I don’t have this figured out, not even close. But when I look back at that photo of Kate, my daughter, up above on Fomapan, I don’t think about aperture, or the fact I nearly missed focus. I think about how she was looking at me that day. That’s the whole thing, really. The technical stuff gets you to the moment. After that it’s just you, your camera, and whether you’re paying attention.

Next time you’re out shooting, try the thing my horn teacher told me. Do the work, get the technique out of the way, then let it go. Stop worrying about what you want the photo to say and start wondering what the person looking at it is going to feel. Worked for Glenn Miller, badly, according to my old music teacher. Might work better for you.

Also in this series: Part I — An Introduction  ·  Part II — Why Do We Photograph?  ·  Part III — The Emotions of Photography  ·  Part IV — The Art of Storytelling  ·  Part V — Identity & Self-Expression  ·  Part VI — Connection Through Photography  ·  Part VII — The Philosophy of Impermanence  ·  Conclusion

A Photography Philosophy Series – Part I – An Introduction

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With the aim of delving deeper into the meaning behind photography, I’ve decided to launch a new series of articles. Here, I want to explore questions like why rather than just how or with what. In my Photography 101 series, we looked at the basics—technique, lenses, and so on. I’ve written extensively about gear in my camera reviews. But now, I’m searching for something beyond that.

The wheels in my mind are already beginning to turn. Not frenetically yet, but there’s a steady intellectual process underway. Answering “why” feels more challenging than “how” or “with what.” It demands more from me than simply focusing on technique or gear.

Here goes anyway!

To set the stage for this exploration, I’ll begin by sharing my own journey in photography. Understanding where I come from may help illuminate my perspective on the medium.

I was born in an age before the all-powerful image took over. Yes, we had photos, and I enjoyed looking through them in our albums. Each image was a physical object, and the idea of viewing images on a screen was foreign to us all. When we spoke of phones, we meant the ones hanging on the wall at home or in the phone boxes on the street. They certainly weren’t for taking photographs.

Back then, cameras fell into two categories: point-and-shoot cameras for the masses and “proper” cameras for photographers. Point-and-shoots were basic, easy to use, and, for me as a small child, they were an introduction to photography. Proper cameras, on the other hand, were for those who had learned the craft of photography, and using one made you feel part of a certain fraternity.

My first Form Master at prep school, Father Gerald, had a proper camera and recorded school life with it. Occasionally, a board with a selection of 6-by-4-inch photos would appear, always in black and white. Father Gerald must have had his own darkroom for developing and printing. I have no idea what kind of camera he used, but it was undoubtedly a proper one.

In 1984, a German orchestra visited Hull, and Stefan Haller from Neustadt an der Aisch stayed with us. Stefan had a proper camera, and I was fascinated by it. When I asked my father if I could have one too, he agreed—but I would have to learn how to use it first. The local YPI organized a summer school offering various activities, including proper photography. And that, Dear Reader, is how I first encountered this “proper photography” lark!

So now you know the why and how behind my beginnings in photography. Let’s look at how this journey evolved. My first proper camera was a Praktica MTL 3. It was fully manual and had a built-in light meter, which helped me get my exposure right each time—or nearly each time. With that camera, I trained my eye and explored the world around me.

Photography at the time was film photography. Although Kodak invented the digital camera in 1979, digital photography didn’t become accessible until the early 21st century. Growing up, color photography was for capturing moments with friends and having a laugh; black and white was considered more “arty” and suited for serious photography. I was deeply affected by the black-and-white images in newspapers, while color images seemed relegated to magazines.

I remember having breakfast with my father every morning as he read The Independent, a paper known for its high standard of photographic journalism. This was my daily visual inspiration. I had a subscription to National Geographic, where I encountered even more incredible photography in its pages. This was top-class photojournalism, and these images now serve as a historical reference for us all.

This is the time and place I come from. For young Gen Z readers, it might sound like ancient history, but to me, it’s deeply real and continues to influence my approach to photography in the digital age.

Now that you’ve had a glimpse into my why, let’s dive deeper. In the next article, we’ll look at why others feel compelled to pick up a camera. Throughout the series, we’ll explore the connections between images and emotions, how we tell stories through our photos, and how photography can be a form of self-expression leading to personal growth. We’ll examine how photography connects us to others, reflect on the philosophy of impermanence, and, at the end of the series, I’ll invite you, Dear Reader, to reflect on your own photographic journey…

Also in this series: Part I — An Introduction  ·  Part II — Why Do We Photograph?  ·  Part III — The Emotions of Photography  ·  Part IV — The Art of Storytelling  ·  Part V — Identity & Self-Expression  ·  Part VI — Connection Through Photography  ·  Part VII — The Philosophy of Impermanence  ·  Conclusion