Personal photography
Your kitchen counter at 7 AM. Someone’s unmade bed caught in afternoon light. A stranger’s mug collection on open shelving. These images shouldn’t matter. They’re compositionally unremarkable, technically forgettable, and utterly ordinary.
If we really only cared about excellence, these should end up in the bin. Yet to me they’re among the most compelling photographs.
I’ve taken a lot of lighthouses in my years because I find their idea insane: build a structure in the most inhospitable places, put a few guards in it, and make them keep the light on. It’s crazy.
This insanity made me go round a lot of the Scottish East coast lighthouses to photograph them.
I’ve noticed something about the photography advice floating around online. Everyone talks about finding your “style” or upgrading your gear, but nobody mentions the one thing that actually separates competent photographers from exceptional ones: obsession.
I took this picture in October 2006 in Findhorn, Scotland (see previous posts to see more photos from that spot).
I used to spend a lot of time on Scotland’s West coast to take photos. The landscape is wild and desolate, nobody is around, a perfect place for photography.
One of my favourite places is Glencoe and Glen Etive. Small mountains, scarce vegetation, crazy weather and midges. It’s also a lot of other photographers’ favourite place. Around Black rock cottage, you can nearly tell where to put your tripod because the rocks have the marks.
But it doesn’t detract from the fact that it’s a great place, full of poetry and character.
Other people’s photos are always more interesting to me. When I look at other people’s photos, I always find them better made than mine: the technique is better, the composition is better, the tones are better, the colours or contrast are better, the artistic vision is more obvious, they’re more innovative, and the general idea is more interesting.
Last week I visited the lighthouse at Cordouan, on the French Atlantic coast, not far from where I live. It’s one of those things that aren’t far, but as a local you don’t do (e.g. when I grew up in Paris it took me many years to visit the Eiffel tower the first time even though I saw it nearly every day).
One of the things I’ve struggled with lately is what I called to myself “the trap of meaningfulness”. I need to put names on things to think about them, even if it’s not the right one others use, don’t judge me.
I took this photo in 2008 with my 5D. I was on my way to the West coast of Scotland with a friend of mine (in the photo next to the monument) and we stopped on the way when I saw this monument away from the road on top of a hill. We walked to it and took some photos.
I remember it had a long list of names on a plaque, so I’m assuming it was a war monument, but I now can’t remember exactly what it said.
I’ve watched, and sometimes was involved in, countless conversations about creativity that devolve into the same tired refrain: “Quality matters more than quantity”, “creativity can’t be controlled”, and my personal favourite “I prefer creating high-value work rather than churning out rubbish”.
This thinking is nonsense.
