Fog and sun make an interesting mix. This is also a mix of technique for me: landscape photo, but in square and monochrome. Mixing it up all round this morning.

Fog and sun make an interesting mix. This is also a mix of technique for me: landscape photo, but in square and monochrome. Mixing it up all round this morning.

I took this photo at an exhibition in the Quai Branly museum in Paris.
The line of headphones is what attracted me when I was walking from piece to piece in the exhibition (Hoda Afshar). They have nothing to do with the exhibition itself, they’re probably there in general, but when I saw them I knew I wanted to photograph them somehow.

View from above at Paris Photo. It reminded me of a rat labyrinth so I couldn’t resist.

Since I started taking photography seriously ca. 2003, the craft has become democratised beyond recognition. Every pocket contains a device capable of producing images that would have required thousands of euros of equipment twenty five years ago. But, I see the same tired shots repeated endlessly: the obligatory sunset, the artfully arranged breakfast, the mirror selfie with calculated spontaneity, the same copycat shots of the masters.
This saturation creates an interesting paradox: we’re drowning in images whilst starving for actual photography. Are we really all photographers?

Your habitual locations tend to feel boring, empty of photographic interest. Ordinary is a curse. But are they, really? Is it really what the problem is?

In photography, there’s a fascinating paradox: while equipment isn’t the essence of photography, it can serve as a powerful catalyst for creativity.

A lot of the time, the first question people ask when they see a photo they like is “what camera did you use?”, “what settings did you use?”, “what presets did you use in Lr?”. These questions are about receipes, not photography.

A while back, Josh suggested that I read a book by Austin Kleon, “Show your work“. I wasn’t convinced at first I’d be interested, but as he thought I would be, I gave it a chance and bought it. It turns out that the title and the blurbs are misleading and the book is in fact very interesting and overlaps significantly with what I write here.
One of the things Austin says is “become a documentarian of what you do”. When I read that chapter, I had the realisation that this is potentially the one thing I miss the most in the world of photography. It seems photography has lost its documentarians somewhere along the way.

A few weeks ago, when we were on holiday in Southern Spain, I took some photos with two film cameras: the Flexaret VI TLR and the Pentacon Six TL. The photos are nothing special, just a record of holidays and gear experiments.
