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.
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.
I once read that if two Germans meet, they’ll form a club. I’m not German, but it’s a fair description of something more universal: the need to belong. Photographers aren’t always the most extroverted bunch, but even the shy ones want to connect with somebody who gets it. When I’m out and about, I clock anyone carrying a camera before I’ve even registered I’m doing it. Brand, make, lens, all of it, filed away automatically. Even a simple nod between strangers is a small acknowledgment: yes, you too. Am I judging them while I’m at it? Sometimes. To err is human.
A film camera round someone’s neck gets my attention faster than anything digital. When I take the Mamiya C220 out, the camera itself becomes almost as much of a talking point as whatever I actually photograph with it. People stop and ask what it is, whether you can still get film for it, or tell me their grandfather had one just like it. That’s the charm of a medium format TLR in 2026: it still gets a reaction.
Photography, and film photography especially, has a bit of a niche, insider feel to it. Carrying a film camera says something: that you’re serious enough to bother, that you know what you’re doing because the camera certainly isn’t doing it for you. We’re artists, therefore superior, or so we tell ourselves for a bit of validation. There’s an argument that film demands more knowledge, and that developing your own rolls proves some kind of dedication. Sometimes. Not always. But it’s a decent opener for a conversation, and it usually leads somewhere, even if the relationship that follows only lasts as long as the chat itself.
There’s also the connection between photographer and subject to think about. For years I was terrified of using a model. I’m an introvert, so small talk plus directing someone plus trying not to make it weird sounded like a nightmare. But I wanted to get past that. Buildings don’t talk back or judge your composition. People are a different animal entirely.
I learned the basics of lighting and then needed someone to point a camera at. My daughter and my wife were the first, unwilling volunteers really, then my son and his girlfriend at the time. After that, unsuspecting friends and fellow musicians, until eventually I had enough confidence to approach total strangers and build that rapport on the spot. Turns out plenty of them were just as nervous as I was. Another thing we had in common.
I picked up some advice from Sean Tucker, who does a lot of portraiture: just have a conversation with your model. It sounds too simple to work, but it does. It puts both of you at ease and lets the model forget they’re being photographed at all, which is usually the whole battle.
Meeting other photographers on purpose
Connection isn’t only the brief kind, a nod on the street, a stranger asking about your camera. Sometimes it’s a proper collaboration with other photographers, which for an introvert like me takes actual effort. At parties I’m the one hanging around the edge of the room talking to the dog. Genuinely good conversations, the dog and I.
Still, I make the effort sometimes and meet up with other photographers. Get me started on kit, lenses, actual cameras, and I’ll talk until the cows come home, well past the point most people have quietly switched off. But hand me an audience that actually cares and knows what I’m on about, and something in me relaxes that doesn’t relax anywhere else.
I can see how it looks from the outside: blokes getting together to obsess over a niche hobby. Sounds a bit much when I put it like that. It isn’t, I promise.
The very first post on this blog came out of a meet-up in Nantes, and it was genuinely one of the better days I’ve had with a camera. Classic male-bonding stuff: everyone else turned up with their biggest body and most expensive glass, like it was some unspoken competition. I brought my X100F, small enough to disappear in one hand. The thinking man’s camera, if I’m allowed to say that about myself. Like my car, nothing to look at twice, but I like using it and it gets the job done without any fuss.
I’ve also worked with Nantes Grand Angle, a local collective that organises outings around the city. In exchange for a free tour or a free visit somewhere, we photograph the day and write about it or post to Instagram. I’ve done a couple of these with them, and it’s always interesting watching other photographers work the same scene. Same place, same light, completely different eye. There’s a genuine feel-good factor in that shared vantage point, even if we all walk away with different pictures.
Photography can feel like a solitary thing, and plenty of the time it is. But there’s more connection hiding in it than people give it credit for: the nod between strangers, the collaboration with other photographers, the quiet trust you build with a subject in front of the lens. None of that happens if you’re not paying attention to the people around you as much as the light.
I don’t know that photography needs to mean anything grander than that. Every so often it puts me in a room, or a street, or a Nantes side alley, with someone I wouldn’t otherwise have talked to, camera or no camera. That’s plenty.
A photo doesn’t just show you what’s in front of the camera. It shows you something about whoever’s holding it too. What you point it at, what you wait around for, how you frame the thing, all of that gives you away eventually, whether you meant it to or not.
The selfie question
Take the selfie, probably the most modern version of self-expression going. For some people it’s genuine. For a lot of people it’s a carefully staged little performance for Instagram, hashtag lifestyle, hashtag ootd, hashtag me-myself-and-I. I’m not knocking it exactly, but it does make you wonder how much of it is really self-expression and how much is just performance.
That’s not really what I mean when I talk about photography reflecting who you are, though. Photography’s the one art form where you get to look through the exact same hole I looked through when I pressed the shutter. You’re seeing what I saw, in that instant, and depending on how I’ve edited it afterwards you might catch a bit of whatever was going on in my head at the time too.
Picture two people either side of a coin held up between them. One’s looking at the head, the other’s looking at the tail. Neither of them is wrong, they’re just seeing half the thing. A photograph works a bit like that. What you take from it depends on where you’re standing, and more than that, on everything you’re carrying with you before you even looked at it.
What a photo says about me, whether I like it or not
There’s a shot I took at one of the anti-government demonstrations in Nantes a while back. Someone looking at that could reasonably assume I’ve got strong feelings about French politics. Truth is I was about as neutral as it’s possible to be, I was there for the photograph, not the cause. But the viewer fills that gap in with their own assumptions, and there’s not much I can do about that once the shutter’s gone. I do the same thing looking at other people’s work, so I can hardly complain.
Then there’s the question of why I press the shutter at that exact split second and not a second before or after. Cartier-Bresson had a whole theory about the decisive moment. Mine’s less elegant: I try to clear the frame of anything distracting, get my subject exactly where I want them, or just wait until they walk into the right spot. Means I miss plenty of shots. That’s fine, it’s part of the deal. Has it turned me into some miserable perfectionist? No, thankfully. Do I still push for that extra bit of effort anyway? Yes. Not for me particularly, more for whoever ends up looking at the photo afterwards. Call it professional pride if you like. If you’re going to bother doing something at all, you might as well try and do it properly.
Have I actually changed, though?
I’m honestly not sure my subject matter’s moved on as much as I have. Am I still taking roughly the same photos I always did? Probably, yeah. But I’ve picked up plenty along the way, mostly off YouTube if I’m honest. Forty-odd years since I started, and I’m still learning new things every year, more in the last ten than most of the decades before that. I know more about film now, how to shoot it and develop it properly, and I’ve got a lot better at editing. Worth mentioning I trained in desktop publishing back in 2003, of all things. Twenty-odd years ago, Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXpress, the works. Feels like a different life.
New gear and different lenses got me properly into wide angle for a while, enough to get it out of my system, or so I thought at the time. I’ll probably go back to it again at some point, knowing me. Either way it changed how I look at a scene, and I know how to use the distortion now instead of fighting it. It gives a photo a different kind of impact, something a bit more unusual than the standard view, and it’s occasionally the thing that makes a client notice a shot.
Confidence has come the boring way, just from doing it over and over. Getting out with the camera is still the only trick that actually works. Some people might say I lean too much on gear. Maybe. But I’ve put the hours in too, and at some point that earns you a bit of trust in your own eye.
Do I take the same photos now as I did in 1987? In some ways, yes, because whatever’s essentially me still comes through in the picture. Back then I was purely obsessed with nailing the exposure, and I didn’t have a fraction of the technique or the visual references I’ve got now. I was also fifteen. I’m over fifty now. The core of it hasn’t moved much. Everything around it has, same as it would for anyone after thirty-odd years.
Thirty years in France
Something people might not know: I’ve lived in France longer than I lived in the UK. Has that got into my photography somewhere? Maybe. Probably, actually.
France gave the world Cartier-Bresson and Doisneau, and their street work still gets me every time, that deceptive simplicity that looks effortless and clearly wasn’t. I’d be lying if I said that hasn’t rubbed off on me. It’s there in how I look at Nantes, walking around with a camera, feeling like they’re somewhere just behind my shoulder. Subject matter shifts country to country too. The UK and France don’t hand you the same photos at all.
Doesn’t stop there either. I’ve picked up just as much from photographers online. Sean Tucker, Thomas Heaton, James Popsys, Mango Street, Peter McKinnon, and Jamie Windsor, that lot have all left a mark one way or another. Not a single Frenchman on that list, which says more about me than about French YouTubers. I speak French all day at work and everywhere outside my front door. By the time I’m home I want my own language back. That’s a me thing, not a them thing.
So does the camera show who I am? Some of it, probably more than I control. My photos say something about how careful I am, or I’m not, about being fair to what’s in front of me, about which places pull at me, Nantes streets, French light, and about which photographers I’ve let get under my skin. I don’t think that adds up to some tidy answer about identity. It’s more that every roll I shoot is a little bit of evidence, and I’m not always the one who gets to read it. Maybe that’s the interesting part. I’ll let you decide what mine says about me.
When I first started out, I’d take my film down to the photographer on Newland Avenue, near where I grew up, and he’d make what everyone called a contact sheet. The strips of negatives got cut, slotted into a frame to keep them flat, and exposed straight onto a sheet of photographic paper. Thumbnails of everything from the roll, all in one place, so you could work out which frames were actually worth printing.
Lightroom’s my contact sheet now. Same idea really, I import the whole take and go through deciding what’s worth developing further. Different tools, same decision.
What’s that got to do with telling a story? Everything, actually. A contact sheet is where the story starts getting built, because a narrative needs a shape, a beginning and a middle and an end, and so does a set of photos from a day out. Looking at the whole roll at once, you see how the shots sit next to each other, not just whether any one of them is sharp. Which ones you choose to develop isn’t really about which are technically best. It’s about which ones actually tell you what happened.
That’s roughly how I pick what goes on this blog too. A shot of my mate JD mid haircut, or my dinner right before I demolish it, they’re doing the same job: filling in a piece of whatever the day was. I try not to forget the photo of dessert before I eat it. Miss that window and all you’ve got is a plate with cake crumbs on it, which, as a photo, says nothing.
Back to the idea of an arc, though, because that’s the bit that matters. When I head out for the day I usually start with a few throwaway shots just to get my eye in. Sometimes I’ve got a plan. Usually I haven’t. Mostly I’m just trying to catch the feel of wherever I’ve ended up, a café, a church, a pub, whatever’s in front of me. Each shot leans on the last one, and by the end of the day there’s a sort of thread running through the roll, even if I didn’t plan it that way.
Paid work’s different, obviously. If I’m hired for an event I’ll sit down with the client first and talk through what actually matters to them: what the venue’s like, whether there’s awkward lighting or someone’s got mobility issues to work around, which moments they’d never forgive me for missing. Having that list of must-haves, the Kodak moments I mentioned in the last post, gives me something to hang the day on.
Say I’ve got a wedding booked. I know I’m shooting the bride getting ready. I know I need to be at the venue before the couple turns up. I need the rings photographed before they’re on anyone’s finger. I’ll want portraits of the guests milling about too. Planning all that out in advance is the only reason I’m not a nervous wreck on the day itself.
Just married
Not every story needs a series, though. Sometimes one photo does the whole job. It holds what’s in the frame plus everything that isn’t: the emotion, the context, sometimes a proper mystery.
Take an empty café table in soft morning light, half a cup of coffee gone cold, a notebook left open. That’s a story on its own. Who was sitting there? Why did they leave? What were they writing? The photo doesn’t answer any of it. It just hands you the question and lets you sit with it.
Different people will read that image differently depending on what they’re bringing to it. It’s really a conversation between whoever took the photo and whoever’s looking at it. I set the scene, choose the light, press the button, but it’s the viewer who finishes the story in their own head.
Same goes for people. A portrait of someone staring out of a window, somewhere else in their head entirely, makes you wonder what they’re thinking about, or where they’re going, or what just happened to put that look on their face. It’s more than a face in a frame at that point. There’s a whole narrative sitting underneath it that words wouldn’t do justice to.
Am I sure about this cake?
Telling a story with a camera isn’t really about the picture-taking bit at all. It’s about deciding which moments are worth keeping and finding a way to shoot them so they carry more than what’s literally in frame. Sometimes that takes a whole roll. Sometimes it’s one frame and you’re done.
Next time you’re out with a camera, don’t just take pictures. Ask yourself what you actually want someone to feel looking at this later, whether that’s a quiet morning in a café or a wedding with two hundred people watching. Look back through your old photos sometime too, in order, like a reel rather than a folder. It changes how you see them. Might even change how you see the next roll you shoot.
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.
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.
Cameras. Why? What is it that makes us pick one up in the first place? For me, a camera isn’t just a nice object to own. It’s a tool, a box with a lens, letting light hit film or a sensor and turn into an image. Doesn’t matter if the box is a hundred years old or fresh out of the factory, the principle doesn’t change. Even the phone in your pocket is just the latest version of that same box. But the mechanics aren’t really the question. What actually drives someone to lift the thing to their eye and press the button?
Kodak had an answer ready made: “capturing that Kodak moment.” Clever, that. First it was marketing genius, tying a photograph to something personal and meaningful. Second, it gave people a reason to buy film and take pictures to show off to everyone else, which if you squint is an early version of the FOMO we’re all drowning in now thanks to social media. Kodak linked photographs to the memories that mattered and got us reaching for our wallets in the process. Very kind of them.
But let me be clear, it’s not a cure for FOMO, whatever Kodak or Instagram would have you believe. Not entirely, anyway. I use my camera to document the world as I find it, at a particular moment. Photography is the one art form that lets you, the person looking at the picture, see something exactly as I saw it. Photojournalists document the world for a living, sure, but that’s not the whole story of why the rest of us do it.
It’s storytelling. A single photograph can hold a whole narrative inside its frame, hinting at more than what’s actually in the shot. Often, though, I need several images to tell the story properly. When I write a piece for this blog, I’m trying to tell it in both words and pictures, walking you through a curated handful of images and hoping you connect with them the way I did when I took them. That connection between photographer and viewer is, to me, one of the best things about photography. Through the lens, we hand someone else a small window into our world, our experience, our mood at the time. Storytelling isn’t just documentation. It’s building a shared space where someone else gets to feel something too.
Beauty matters too, obviously. There’s something deeply satisfying about nailing a composition, about a scene coming together the way you pictured it. I like to think I can build a pleasing image, using whatever tricks and techniques get me there. The aim is always the same: show the scene the way I saw it, and hope it makes you feel something. Photography might be the only medium that lets someone else see what only I saw, at a moment that, thanks to time passing, no longer exists anywhere except in that frame.
Sometimes it really is just art for art’s sake. In a world that wants everything to be productive and monetised, making something purely because it pleases you feels almost like rebellion.
Then there’s the meditative side of it. For me the camera isn’t only a tool for making pictures, it’s a kind of therapy. When I’m in a low mood, or my head’s too full, stepping outside and looking at the world through a viewfinder usually calms things down. Looking through the lens lets me step back from whatever’s nagging at me and get curious instead of anxious. That small shift, from being a participant to being an observer, changes a place that felt overwhelming into something I actually want to explore. The frame becomes a safe little space where nobody’s judging what I do with it. Call it mindfulness if you like the word, I just call it useful.
The process itself matters more than people give it credit for. I keep coming back to Vivian Maier, who left behind rolls and rolls of undeveloped film. Born in 1926, she spent her life photographing without ever showing the work to anyone. Of the roughly 140,000 shots she took, only about 5% were ever developed, a whole body of work that even she never fully saw. That fact still stops me in my tracks. Maybe she was shooting purely for herself, completely wrapped up in the act of it with no need for anyone else’s approval. Her archive is proof that the process can matter as much as the result, and that a photograph has value even if nobody, including the photographer, ever sees it.
In a world where everyone’s told to share, edit and curate their whole life, it’s worth asking whether you’d still take the photo knowing nobody would ever see it. For me, the answer’s a flat yes. Photography isn’t just about impressing people, documenting things, or sharing them. It’s how I make sense of my own head half the time. Every photograph is a small act of noticing, helping me see something more clearly or spot beauty I’d have walked straight past otherwise.
At bottom, photography is a language, one that gets past culture, past language itself, past time. A single photograph can hold something timeless, an unfiltered second of a life that someone on the other side of the planet can look at and understand. That’s a shared visual language, and it’s one of the few ways we get to connect with each other without saying a word.
So why do we photograph? Maybe the answer’s as different as the people asking it, shaped by whatever they’ve lived through. But whether you’re documenting, creating, or just messing about with a camera because it feels good, the act itself tends to make you look at the world, and yourself, a bit harder than you would otherwise. That’s reason enough for me.
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…
You might have caught on to the fact that I’m a little bit the photography enthusiast. I even have a “few” different cameras, most of which are manual film cameras, with a few digital ones thrown into the mix. Over 40 years of learning have gone into getting the results you, Dear Reader, might just have seen on this blog.
Democratisation of photography
How many times have I heard people say, “Oh, I just use my phone,” or worse, “Oh, I could just do that with the camera on my phone?” These statements can really get on my wick! Don’t they just toss aside all the work I’ve put into photography with “real cameras?”
But after a lovely cup of tea and a slice of cake, my nerves have settled, and I’ve had time to reflect on the brashness of my emotions, and come back down to earth. Yes, some people do use the camera on their phone, and maybe, just maybe, unlike the microwave in the tea-making process, it might have a role in photography. Ooooooh, haven’t I just gotten controversial!
A little historical context
Just a quick interlude to remind myself of the democratisisation of photography that came with the Box Brownie in the 1920 and the purists were up in arms! Then the shock and horror of those same purists when colour photography came out with those dastardly Kodak Instamatics, and making photography even more egalitarian. Maybe the phone is just the extension of this and I should remove my own head from my arse and just chill!
The best camera?
“The best camera is the one that’s with you.” — Chase Jarvis.
While this statement might be true in absolute terms, it pains me to admit that for most of the hoi polloi, that camera might just be the one on our ever-intrusive phone. Does that mean I’d choose my phone over a film camera? Hell no! But it does remind me that photography is about capturing the decisive moment in time. I’ve often talked about balance in the photographic process, where you might have to sacrifice grain or digital noise (grains rather disgraced cousin from an inbred family, where somebody knew somebody in the family), to get more light to expose a shot. Or where I might have to sacrifice a certain amount of bokeh, in order to use a longer lens to “bring me nearer to my subject… The eternal give and take, if you will.
I think we might just have to have a little reality check here. Will a mobile phone, or even a very smart phone with a degree in smartness from the dashing and debonair university of Smartness upon Thames, ever be as good as a film camera, or a modern DSLR, even my beloved X100F? No. Sorry if I have just pissed on your bonfire. It will not. However, does that mean that it is completely useless? Far from it.
You still have to “think!”
As an avid reader of this wonderful and thoroughly informative blog, it will not have escaped your attention that I have written a couple of articles about the fundamentals of photography. Going from the very basics of the exposure triangle, through various rules of composition that come to us from the world of traditional art, and that have been transferred to photography. You will have found out and learnt about various lenses available for various cameras, and I have even touched upon the differences between medium format and 35mm film photography. I talked about the advice given for digital as well as film photography. I’ll let you into a secret, “It’s just as valid for smartphone photography!
Yes, I’ve said it. If you put in as much effort into getting the shot on a smartphone as you do with your “real” camera, then You will get good results. Can you have control over every aspect of the shot? No. But, and it’s a big but, “so you other brothers can’t deny,” there is a lot of technology in that little device that really helps you out.
Mindful always
What I’m trying to get at is that when you mindfully take photographs, even with your phone, it is always better than just snapping away like a small dog that knows it’s small. Just a tiny bit of effort towards composition will go a long way. Think about framing, and where the objects are in your image. Think about where the light is coming from. Try and get the best image that you can. So it’s not a Leica? You still have your kidneys and haven’t had to sell one yet. It might be a less formal way of taking a photograph, but I would really like you to respect yourself and put in the effort to take your phone photography beyond the bare minimum.
Conclusion
It would appear that smartphone despite my frist misgivings is here to stay. It is a logical progression of the democratisation of this art. I have been asked to contribute to the website Monochromia, and one of my future colleagues reminded me that one of their contributors uses only his Iphone, and has received all kinds of accolades and has been the subject of numerous Expositions. I have seen his work and it is clear that he is a most mindful photographer, and the only thing that separates us are the tools we use to capture the image. I must not be such a photgraphy snob and so dismissive.
What’s next
In my next article, I go further into this subject and talk about editing images on your phone and giving you ways of sharing your images if you so wish. Maybe even some tips to help you get the results you want. I will talk about the features of the phone camera, how the AI within can help you not just in photography, but also in video production. Stick around to find out more!
