The Soul of the Camera: The Photographer's Place in Picture-Making

by David duChemin

and study your own photographs, and 2) study the work of other photographers.

study these photographs

I appreciate them deeply, and I let the images move me emotionally

An expanding mindfulness of visual language gives me new ways to express myself, even if I am never understood.

After all, understanding is not the only way to experience something. The painter Kandinsky, for example, did not paint to be understood, but to be experienced.

Even those who don’t fully understand our intent—whether we use our knowledge of visual language with genius or otherwise—can still experience it.

The assumption that photography gives us a unique set of visual language tools is meaningless without a willingness to use them.

it’s truly unfortunate that early in the craft of photography we became overburdened with the

notion—the expectation—that the camera never lies.

it suggests an objectivity that was never there, and more so because, having believed it ourselves, we miss the opportunity to take responsibility for one of the things that can mak...

It is interpretation made through the many choices it takes to make a single photograph that allows u...

We can make art, and call it art, without saying it’s brilliant, or even good.

We may not say it well. We may be clumsy with our tools and clichéd in our expression, but it can be art all the same. It can say something all the same.

as we write more, as we explore the work of poets who’ve done this for longer than we have and expand our vocabularies, our poems get better.

Our work has never once improved while we sat on our thumbs and waited. Nor has it ever become stronger while we’ve maintained that we had nothing to say.

If you want to make photographs that are more compelling, you have to accept that every intentionally made photograph is an act of interpretation,

We have to be willing to interpret.

even photojournalism and forensic photography are much more subjective than we’ve been led to believe.

There is freedom in this perspective. Knowing that every choice changes the way we interpret a scene and thus affects (though does not control) the way others read and interpret the photographs we make gives us room to play.

Not knowing what we are trying to say or being willing to make choices about what we ask the camera to translate into two dimensions means we’ll more than likely leave in much more than we need, thus diluting the impact of the image.

Alternatively, we’ll take too much out, forgetting that context so often provides the only clues for a reader to interpret the photograph.

we also need to bring an awareness of the audience and a willingness to interpret the scene in a way that considers how others will experience the image.

The world is full of photographs that are half-efforts that hedge their bets and never express an opinion, so many of them not much more than a “Me too!”

Yes, it’s true: everything has been photographed. But unless all we want to do is say, “Here’s what this looks like,” rather than the much more subjective and personal, “Here’s how I see it, here’s what it feels like,” we can do better.

key statement of the importance of both intent and interpretation

although mere illustration serves a purpose, it’s not the thing with which we most deeply resonate.

a painting (photograph) that is about something is—or can be—much more powerful than a painting (photograph) that is only of something.

What transforms of into about is interpretation—taking

The challenge, of course, is matching the tools with the thing we are trying to say.

Learning to see is not about having open eyes; it’s about having an open mind.

“you have a great eye” makes it sound like something I was born with, as if the way I see the world is nothing more than an accident of genetics.

“You have a great eye” means something more like “You have a great way of thinking about what you see.”

means your brain not only perceives the world in interesting ways, but it also makes all the hundred decisions involved in making a photograph that expresses that.

The real work of the photographer happens...

learning to see is not at all about learning how to use our eyes. It is abou...

We can learn to perceive and think in new ways, which means we can learn to see in new ways.

Thinking in new ways often means un-thinking the old ways.

Photographically, I can’t think of anything that blinds me (metaphorically; remember this is about the brain) more than expectations.

What we expect to see blinds us to what is really there.

We like to think our eyes

are wide open and that we see the world as it is, but our blind spots ar...

the more we try to pay attention to something, the more we try to see it all, the surer we become that we won’t be fooled, and the more certain it is that we will be.

The harder we look at (or for) one thing, the more certain it is we will not see other things.

The key is not to look harder, but to loo...

your brain learns to dismiss information that seems irrelevant. This is pattern recognition, and it’s the same phenomenon that’s responsible for us not noticing the obvious tree or lamppost sticking out of someone’s head until after the photograph is made.

you don’t notice something until it becomes important.

Pattern recognition helps us when we make those patterns important, or when we start to care. For example, the more you are consciously aware of great compositions, the more you will see them.

When the brain becomes aware of (and familiar with) the possibilities, it can more readily recognize them when they

appear in the future.

When Robert Capa said, “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough,” I think he was referring...

truly is intimacy and not the bored familiarity of when we stop noticing) helps us see things others cannot because they don’t deem...