Young (at heart)

Young (at heart)

Photography is – at least as a hobby – all about capturing and remembering beauty and joy. It’s about exploring the world, seeking out new ideas and people and places.

Therefore, it seems entirely logical to me that it should be a way in which one can remain young at heart…

Is this fanciful? It’s certainly a far less concrete idea than the other parts of this photographic alphabet – but that may be fatigue setting in now I’m nearly at the end of my photographic alphabet (I’m moving on, on Saturday, and will spend a few days exploring the delights of the darkroom). However, it’s also an essential part of the practice of photography for the majority of other photographers I’ve met, including the professionals.

OK: I’ve met some people who know what they can do, and don’t want to learn anything new. There are a few for whom this is a badge of pride: they don’t want to learn or try anything new, and there’s often a sort of joylessness about their work.

I know a very much dyed-in-the-wool old-school club photographer and judge, but he’s recently abandoned his Canon DSLRs for Fuji mirrorless, and routinely uses high ISO – so much for the old club idea that the slower the better (was that the film, or progress in general, I wonder?)

Technically, the really young at heart may be what are known as ‘early adopters’ – people who rush to anything new, maybe investing in a new camera as soon as it reaches the market… And then abandoning it as soon as another new model comes along. Don’t knock it, though! It can be your route to keeping nearly abreast of the times at reduced cost, when you snap up the near-mint gear they’ve traded in.

And even if you aren’t buying all the latest kit, you can remain aware of what’s happening, and think about how it might affect the possibilities for making pictures. Being young involved, for most of us, having to save up for things we wanted. And there’s a joyous anticipation of the moment when, finally, you can acquire the thing that you’ve longed for. It’s not the acquisitiveness of the greedy – it’s the pure joy of something wonderful.

So, whether you are eight or eighty, explore something new today… You don’t have to go out and about: I remember the lovely work that André Kertész was producing in his New York apartment in extreme old age, using glass ornaments and sunlight. An object lesson for this time of lockdown! (This is a memory of a TV programme I saw 35 years ago – it would be wonderful if the BBC could dig up the series of photographic greats for the lockdown – other programmes featured Ansel Adams and Bill Brandt.)

The picture is of my friend and photographic mentor, Fred Whisker, taken a few years ago. A man who delights in images and new ideas, always.