We often have conversations here about how we see the world. “Show me how you see,” Billy told me once before sending me on an assignment. We are all looking at the same world but see different things. Someone who consistently sees differently than everyone else is an invaluable asset to a photojournalism team.
I think of that. A lot. On every assignment, after I shoot the safety shot, the one that can run with no problem, the one that is “good enough”, I start trying to see. I ask myself little questions:
“What can I see from up there?”
“What can I see from under there that I can’t see from up here?”
“What could I see with that lens that I can’t see with this one?”
“What am I not seeing?”
And then, inevitably, when it’s all said and done and packed up and gone home-
“What didn’t I see?”
The answer is usually: a lot.
There is just so much to see!
Sometimes I can look at a photo and know who saw it. I know based on the moment, the composition, the light.
But how do readers see? Often I’ll bring back an image, and one of the editors will say: “I like how you saw this, but a reader won’t get it.”
Or: “It won’t translate in print.”
John W. Coniglio, the photo master here, explained it to me in these terms- we have been conditioned, over many years, to see. Often it is to see in just a few select ways, depending on where and with whom we have been working. Most readers are absolutely 100% unconditioned. A lot of people use the term “photo illiterate” or “visually illiterate” or something else insulting like that. I don’t think that because readers haven’t been taught what “makes a good photo” that that means they don’t know. They know. They can’t tell us why, other than “it’s cute,” “the color is nice,” something along those terms. But they know the difference between interesting and not, or visually stimulating and not. It’s apparent when we work our asses off and apparent when we don’t.
So, a roundabout way to getting down to business, daily doses of sight, shot by me:
Participants stretch before a level-one Qigong form during the four-day Qigong Healing and Miracle Making workshop held by the Supreme Science Qigong Center at the Chattanooga Convention Center on Saturday. Qigong is an ancient Chinese art form meant to enhance and strengthen the body’s energy. The workshop was led by Jeff Primack and lasted through Tuesday.
A Baby Phat shoe reflected in the gold bottom of another Baby Phat shoe, shot in the studio. My roommate and fellow intern, Alli Kwesell, was shooting fashion in the studio and I took control for a few minutes. This one needed more work, I’d like more of the sole of the shoes, which is detailed with the Baby Phat logo, but I was called off to another assignment.
