In my last post on the subject of developing a personal style, I ended with a list (did I mention I love lists?) of things I was going to work on to focus my work. The first item in the list was to “Identify subjects that I am interested in, which will sustain my interest over time, and which will be accessible to me.” Here is a list (surprise!) of some topics I thought of, along with specific examples of subjects that I think satisfy those criteria:
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Natural environments
I particularly enjoy dramatic lighting, including fog, the edge between shadow and light (like a flower bending out of the shadows into a beam of light), textured sky (I always use a polarizer so I can capture the texture of the sky) and patterns in nature. I also sometimes enjoy photographing animals, when they are doing something interesting. Landscapes generally don’t attract my interest unless they have one of the criteria just mentioned, such as dramatic lighting.
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Plants
I love hunting mushrooms, and have been doing so for about 15 years. But I don’t really cook, so there’s no need to harvest them except for bringing gifts from the woods back to friends who do cook. Though I always have fun hunting, I was getting a little bit bored with it. But four years ago that changed when I saw the book Treasures from the Kingdom of Fungi, by Taylor F. Lockwood. I attribute this book to being the catalyst for my renewed interest in photography. I saw Lockwood speak at a Puget Sound Mycological Society (PSMS) meeting and realized that I could go on “mushroom photo safari’s”. A hunt without all the bloodshed, or sporeshed, as the case may be. I know: it’s probably difficult to imagine anything more geeky than a mushroom hunter who photographs the mushrooms rather than pick them.
I also love photographing mountain wildflowers. They are so fleeting, sometimes lasting only a few hours in their harsh mountain environments. So I feel particularly lucky to find wonderful specimens when out hiking. I enjoy documenting them as both things of beauty and subjects for further study.
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Travel
Telling a photographic story of a journey, whether it be local or abroad, gives me focus and great documentation for the future, as my (so called) memory of the details fail me. I would like to learn more about documentary photography, and of the elements of putting together a good photo essay of a place in time and its people and environment. Future projects will be to take small trips to local urban areas and photograph the whole experience, sort of like mini photo-documentaries.
Trips to Italy, Mexico and
Ecuador have given me the chance to explore this concept of documenting my experiences of the people and places abroad; And dozens of hikes in the North Cascades have already served as my more local photo-documentary topics.
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Local Places
West Seattle, in general the industrial area boarded between I-5 on the East, the Sound on the West, Royal Brougham on the North, and Michigan St. on the South is ripe with interesting places, old signs, strange structures, forgotten waterways and usually un-photographed people.
Things I tend not to focus on so much include: portraits, architecture, “street” photography and most “Art” photography. Perhaps I just haven’t adequately explored these topics enough to become enthralled, so I’m not writing them off just yet. However, I’m not moved to spend my few hours of photography time concentrating on them at this point.
The next step is to define some projects around these subjects. That will be the topic of the next posting. Then it’s time to get out and start making more pictures!
Photographership 