m e g a p e r l s

It has long been known and preached that if you wanted to become a professional photographer because you enjoyed taking photos, you should basically forget the whole thing and find another profession. The reason for this is that the act of taking photos will only account for a fraction of the time put into the job. The main chunk is marketing, logistics, accounting and the other mundane things needed to run a business.

Even in the art photography world things are not necessarily different. The active photographer Robert Adams in an interview stated that he took the last photo about two years ago. He had been spending most of his time editing, writing, publishing and thinking about photography.

There has never been a time to produce images or other content (including this blog post which I am writing while on the move) easier and faster and at a lower cost. At the same time, this constant opportunity of articulation and active communication is also threatening the balance with reflection and mental progression that is needed to advance in the things we do. It is the age where one is made to feel almost guilty when idle, as there is no longer an excuse for being unproductive and so many others are seen working and publishing something. However, being active is not equal to being productive. The old advice of always carrying a camera seems to become more of a burden than merit. What is the purpose of always being ready to shoot?

Perhaps it is worth trying another approach. The last years of using large format cameras and having a family have meant much less opportunistic shooting for me. On the other hand I am spending a lot more time and effort looking around me and trying to visualize potential images. Sometimes that means a future return with a camera, but much more often it means a mental encounter with an image that does not even exist yet. For me this is a lot more satisfying than editing down photos taken, but perhaps I am just accepting my fate and handicap. After all there will never be a replacement for being out there taking photos and evaluating them. Nonetheless, good photographs are the result of seeing, not ideas or a keeper ratio resulting from random successes. Photographing without a camera helps me with this at this point in time and is one of the reasons I like working in large format so much right now.

I saw a a gallery of photos in the underground walkway between Hibiya and Ginza station. Not the most glamourous exhibition space I suppose. Nonetheless, the prints were nice to look at (taken on film, printed digitally as it turned out) and I recommend looking at the website. Might be a little difficult to navigate without understanding Japanese, just click on the photo next to the camera for the series. Oh, and don’t bother with the cats.