Purposefulness, happenstance, serendipity and dist

Purposefulness, happenstance, serendipity and dist

How do you approach your picture-making?

Do you have something that you are thoroughly committed to, and work at? I’m thinking of handlerstudio’s series of images a couple of years back, where he and a friend had photographed parts of Florida being affected by climate change, with police ‘crime scene’ tape across the foreground of each image.

I know other photographers who work hard at a self-appointed project, and when it’s finished, squared off, they immediately seek another one. I have two projects, on older and differently-beautiful models, plus a long-running interest in photographing musicians. Im not sure if the latter's a project, but it might be...

I’m sometimes aware of strong drivers behind my own image-making, things that are self-evident, when I stop to think about them, but which aren’t necessarily at the front of my mind as I shoot.

Occasionally, I simply trip over a shot, possibly because of a decision I’ve made to put myself in creativity’s way, but without knowing how it will work. (I’m a great believer in the idea that if you put a photographer and a model in a space, pictures will happen. Add ‘good’ to the three axioms, and you can add ‘excellent’ to the outcome.)



If you practice, read, watch and think, you will find that good things happen unbidden. Instead of being concerned only to get a shot of a beautiful flower, your mind will sort through the approaches and techniques that you can apply to making an image of it.

And then, there’s random… There’s something I’ve seen on Facebook: posts marked as coming from ‘Distractify’ – appropriate for the forum, I think, which is designed to lead you through an endless maze of slightly-interesting things, and tends to frustrate forensic searching. The ratio of dross to what interests me means that I don’t use the site much, because it makes me cross more than it delights me. Unlike EPZ…

Can I suggest some purposefulness today? Learn one new thing about how to use your camera and lenses, or possibly your accessories. Happy, serendipitous happenstances may come your way as a result.

The last shot is simply a record of preparations for a water feature in our garden: both it and the trench for the cable have featured in my portfolio, I think.




P.S. There appears to be a limit to title length. Distractification should figure up there.