The Next Level

Rethinking your approach to photography

I was trying to get somewhere with these seemingly unrelated images. The place it lead me was completely different. A project still in-progress.

Out of all the pictures you’ve accumulated, which are your favorites? What merits do they have that elevate them to your favorites? Is it the subject matter? Is it an aesthetic? In what way are they important to you? Have you ever really thought about these and related questions?

Is your goal to reproduce those favorites in some way? Should that be your goal? I propose that in most cases that may not be a rewarding pursuit. Can those favorites be a guide to what you should be pursuing? Maybe, but you may need to look at those favorites in a different light that’s a bit deeper.

We all get excited by novelty, new places, grand scenes, and the unfamiliar. I suggest that there’s something deeper in your favorite photographs than mere novelty or grandiosity. There’s a human emotional response you have within that picture, a story, a theme that goes beyond the mere specific subject matter depicted. As photographers, we can all be seduced into thinking that the story, that emotional connection we feel when looking at our favorites is dependent on far away, grandiose, novel, and unfamiliar scenes. It doesn’t have to be, in fact, the same things that attract us to our favorite pictures should motivate our photography every day in all of our familiar circumstances.

A New Way Of Thinking

Do a deep dive into your archives, don’t filter them by place, occasion, or even ratings. Take a good hard look at what you pointed your camera at over the year, especially the failures. Ask yourself why you made pictures of various subjects at all. Why did you care? What is that story and how did it make you feel? I think you can learn a lot from your archives, especially your failures. I don’t mean just technical failures; you were responding to something, what was it?

There is a gold mine in all of those failures, all of those things you’ve pointed your camera at. I assure you there are themes you may not have even realized. I think time spent thinking about those themes that consistently motivate you to lift the camera to your eye and press the shutter release has a lot of meaning. Start thinking in terms of what those themes are, and what story is behind them that you’re compelled at some level to share.

Start looking at your work in terms of collections or bodies of work that center around those themes and stories. The easiest way to do that is of course subject matter or occasions in time, but I think there’s something deeper. I suggest there are many specific subjects, many completely different than what you’ve pointed your camera at before that may even better represent those themes. Those failures may have great potential in very different specific subjects.

Don’t hem yourself into thinking your failures depicting vast landscapes of faraway places aren’t themes you can better explore in still-life, portraits, street photographs, local scenes, or a thousand other ways. Maybe the themes of those failed landscape images of that wonderful place, or places have far more to do with your wanderlust. Maybe that’s the real theme, the better story, or the part of the story that’s missing?

Challenge yourself to explore that further. Can you make a compelling still-life that better explains what you felt or what story you were really trying to tell? Go make some candid street pictures at the airport or people that traveled to get you to your hometown. Capture that. I don’t suggest this as a prescription, merely a different way to look at your photographic journey. Come at your archives sideways. Make collections and stories that can become bodies of work. Rethink what you made in terms of why you made it.

How This Relates To Prints

Reverse your thinking from making a few big prints of your “favorites” and then maybe some smaller ones, or a book, or a portfolio to embellish those with also-ran pictures you like less. Instead, pick one of those themes you pondered on and reimagine it. Possibly use pictures you made, or better yet make something completely different from scratch that gets to the heart of your motivations. Define a simple, achievable project for yourself. Something like a collection of 20 small prints that tell that story or maybe an on-demand magazine.

Every time you add pictures to that body of work ask yourself what images were successful? Which ones weren’t and why? What’s missing? What pictures are actually just duplicates of the ones that are successful? Set yourself a reasonable deadline, something that is not infinite (at least for the first version). Commit to completing whatever that tangible goal was.

Don’t be afraid to throw everything out except maybe that one image that worked. Make the rest of them you need another day. Go through this process over and over with the time you have set out for yourself. Don’t put obstacles in your way that will prove to be giant distractions from the actual photography. Don’t put dependencies on yourself that will serve as excuses for why you can’t make pictures and remake pictures.

At the end of this process, you’ll have something. I assert that you’ll have something better than you thought it would be at the beginning. You’ll have something to show people and you should show them. Get thoughts and thoughtful feedback, tell people what you were trying to do. This is the way to figure out what you may want to print big. This is the way to get to the next level of what you want to show in your photography and who the audience should be.

Why Bother

The entire point boils down to making sense of one’s work through success and failure. Sharing your work in the context of what your intent was and is will ultimately allow progress to that “next level” for your photography. Distilling your work through a lens of intent and meaning will make you a far better editor and more importantly inform you every time you pick up your camera. The technical failures will diminish, your voice will be clarified, and you’ll have a much better sense of where you want to go.

Please share your thoughts, especially those who have stories and examples where this kind of editorial exercise has been fruitful. If you’re interested I’d be glad to share a few unexpected places this contemplation and iteration has led my future work and how different it turned out to be from what I thought that direction might have been when I started. Maybe even what those four pictures at the top have to do with each other ;-)