Finding the story: my journey as a photographer

I’ve been into photography for a while now, having bought my first DSLR back in 2012.

When I first got my Canon EOS Rebel T3i, I had no idea how it worked. I kept to the automatic scene settings for a while, and was disappointed at how bland and awful my photos I took with it were. After maybe a year or so, I finally realized (accepted?) that a key reason my photos kept turning out poorly was because I didn’t understand the concepts of photography. I wanted the camera to do one thing, and it seemed to always do another.

So I bought and read “Understanding Exposure” by Bryan Peterson and learned all about how the camera works, from a technical perspective.

Not long after, I took what was to become the first photo I posted to Flickr, titled “The Building” (click the photo to make it fullscreen):

This one was a marked improvement over anything I had ever taken previously, and I was pretty happy with it back then. But it still isn’t good, not anywhere close.

Looking at it now, I can point out all kinds of problems. Some of the them could have been fixed with editing, but there are some fundamental structural issues in this photo that no amount of editing can fix.

If you look closer at the house, you’ll notice that it’s not actually at the top of the hill…it’s a little bit beyond it. You can also see how this photo isn’t actually a side profile of the house, it’s at a bit of an angle. These two issues give it this strange sunken, off-kilter look that makes it feel a little unsettled.

The biggest problem with this photo though is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Was I trying to show a lonely, sad house? The lighting of the sky would seem to indicate that, as would the slight under exposure. But the position and size of the house in the frame, combined with all the flowers paints a rather serene picture. It’s confused about itself.

That is why this photo fails.

So I kept working, and I kept reading. I moved on to “The Photographer’s Eye” by Michael Freeman. This book is all about how to compose your subject in a photograph from an aesthetic point of view. This helped me immensely when considering how to frame a photograph so as to achieve a look.

But still, my photos weren’t very good. I think this was because I didn’t really know what kind of photographer I wanted to become, what I wanted to specialize in.

I came a lot closer one day in 2013. I had just finished attending JSConf 2013, which, if you’ve read any of my past writing, you know that this conference was life altering for me. I was sitting in the Jacksonville airport waiting to fly home, completely exhausted, sleep deprived, and maybe a little hungover, staring out the window. Then I started staring at the window, when I became intrigued. I decided I wanted to photograph the window. I spent about 5 minutes playing with angles, and I finally hit on this:

Now we’re getting somewhere. I’m less in love with this photo than when I first took it, it has some slight symmetry issues, and I should have stood back further and zoomed in more to reduce barrel distortion. But it’s still a pretty good photo.

It was the first photo I took that I loved.

Perhaps more importantly though, it’s the first time I captured a moment, not just a photo. Ironically enough, the moment happened by accident. I didn’t even notice it until I was editing.

There’s this prominent figure that’s painted on the window, a person with a bag on their shoulder walking somewhere. It conveys a sense of motion, or at least that’s what the ad is intended to do. The original is actually very colorful. It’s a little fake though, as all ads are. If you look at the bottom of the photo, you see several people sitting there. None of them are talking to each other, none of them are moving, they’re all reading, or on their phones. They’re waiting, trying fill the boredom, that sanitized version of airline purgatory before they can get to where they want or need to be. It’s a juxtaposition I’m fascinated by, the pristine and ultimately fake life that advertisements want to sell us and the boredom and banality of real life. So I titled it “Sitting, Waiting”, a sort of sarcastic title meant to highlight this juxtaposition.

This is what I was missing in my photos before: a story.

I now understand that I need to tell a story with my photos for them to be interesting.

When I say “tell a story,” I don’t mean a story in the classic sense. There are characters, but they aren’t what we normally think of as characters. These characters may be humans, but I’ve found I’m not particularly good at portraiture, so I usually go with inanimate objects. These are still very much characters though, at least to me.

There is a story arc, but it’s not an arc of time. The story arc of my photos, at least my good ones, is the emotional arc that the viewer goes through as they discover the photo. That realization of certain aspects of the photo that comes in waves.

And so on and so forth.

In the years since JSConf, I’ve been working more on my photography and improving my technique and skill. I’ve gotten to where I recognize when I have the itch to photograph something, and to take advantage of all those little moments where I could be photographing something.

Interestingly enough, I probably use my iPhone more than my DSLR these days, simply because it’s what I have on me. Maybe I’ll start carrying my DSLR in my bag every day.

So here are some recent photos I’ve taken that I feel are representative of where I’m at right now as a photographer, and my interpretation of what they mean. First is the photo titled “Stop (Sp)eculation.”

I took this photo in The Mission in San Francisco. This is my most topical photo that I’ve taken, a commentary on the housing situation in SF, of which The Mission is ground zero. The original sticker was pretty straightforward in it’s meaning and intent, but what I find fascinating is all the other stickers have been stuck on it afterwards, muddying the message. This makes me think how complicated the housing situation is, with the seemingly simple explanations being flung around all the time, and the true complexity of it all once you dig in to it.

The lighting was pretty harsh the day I took it, which I think works in its favor. The more expected lighting would be some dramatic dark rain clouds or something, and I would have dove on that chance had it happened. I’m glad it didn’t though, because the harsh lighting gives the photo this almost saccharine look, a sort of harsh, forced cheeriness. I think that it lends the photo a sort of uneasiness to it, highlighting the uneasiness of the topic.

My next photo I want to show you is one that many people consider to be my best, although I personally don’t think it is. This one is simply titled “Colors.”

I do think that is is my best photo from a technical perspective. The composition is definitely the best composition I’ve done, and the tension derived from the angles of the building and light strands is just about perfect. It also has a neat visual gimmick with the use of color on black and white.

But what’s the story? I think the story of this one is about creating splashes of life and celebration in a drab world, especially fitting considering this building is part of an abandoned naval base. I don’t think that comes through very strongly in the image without knowing the back story though.

So the photo that I consider to be my best is titled “A Reminder.”

I love this photo, I really do. I love the strong lines in it, the composition and balance, and the muted colors.

I find the story fascinating too, “Lock Padlock to Padlock.” It’s such a simple phrase, but can be interpreted so many ways, and they are all correct from a grammatical perspective. As a side note, this is why I love English as a language, it encourages experimentation. My first interpretation of this phrase was “Lock the padlock to padlock the door.” It’s wonderfully absurd in it’s redundancy. The other interpretation, and the one probably intended by the author, is “Lock one padlock to the other, because the chain is too short.” An amusing oversight when selecting a chain, with an over engineered solution to compensate. I hope this evolution of meaning is what went through your mind too, because I think that’s the core of this story’s photo. Either way, this photo has a strong visual impact, and a delightful absurdity in the subject that gives this photo such an oddly playful feel. It’s my favorite.

So this is my journey into photography so far. I’m still very much an amateur, and I have a long ways to go before I can claim to be any good. It’s a fun journey though, one I find to be incredibly rewarding. It’s unbridled creativity, in a way that coding never can be. It literally is the creation of art.

And art is by far the single best thing that humanity has ever created, and creating art is the most important thing that we, as humans, can do.

P.S. You can check out more of my work on Flickr and Instagram.