All Views Expressed

What moves us to make a picture?  If I am working on a project, or being paid to produce images for someone else, there is a clear directive, an intention, a goal, a focus to the photography: tell this story, show that product off to its best advantage, make this consistent with that, work this idea through to a logical conclusion.  But quite often I’m just carrying the camera and going about my daily business.  I might be walking familiar streets for the thousandth time or simply pottering about at home when something calls out and the urge to make a photograph is overwhelming.

A lecturer of mine called it ‘speculative’ photography in a tone which suggested he wanted less speculation and more focus.  Part of my issue with that is down to the kind of photographer I think I am.  It’s a question I struggle to answer (except to say ‘Not a wedding photographer’.  No offence to wedding photographers intended - some of us are just not cut out for that kind of pressure!) because some of it is landscape, some is architectural, some is candid portraiture, some is ‘street’.  I’m like a magpie always on the look out for the next shiny thing.

The thing is, at its heart, there is  storytelling aspect to photography.   So I suppose that suggests that I’m some sort of documentary photographer.  Perhaps more columnist than journalist though;  a blend of opinion, fact and fiction - subjective, suggestive and yes, speculative.  I find it where I see it.  Perhaps I’m tired and drained from hours at a computer and when I glance outside it’s a tiny stab of envy that makes me photograph the two young lads staring at the sunset from where they’ve clambered to the top of the portakabin outside my window.  Or I’ve been struck by how odd it is that it’s so mundane now to have a conversation with my daughter via Whatsapp as she’s propped up in a kitchen cupboard, the bright phone screen looming from among an assortment of glassware as I dry dishes.  Perhaps I am lamenting my fading eyesight; feeling grateful to a friend for helping us afford a new boiler when ours failed in the middle of winter; saw something that reminded me of a painting by a friend I’ve not seen in years - all stories, stories which are simply a reflection on the way I see things.  When you look, what do you see?