Remembering your shots

[alan_zinn]

<p>I'm always astonished that I can immediately remember a picture from just a brief glimpse of part of the neg - up-side-down even! My memory is shot for most other things. <br>

Ever lose a roll and find it years later? Now that's weird! I'm not even sure if it's my film at first. <br>

<br /><br /></p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>I mostly remember with digital with film i 'm sometimes suprised. I like being suprised.</p>

[johncrosley]

<p>I remember almost every photo I've ever taken, if given a little bit to review the photo and the ones around and to reconstruct my steps and shots.</p>

<p>There are almost NO shots I can't remember some details of, especially street work. Nature work (birds, otters, etc. from one or two repeat vantages) is different, as I shot at the same place so many times; I remember the shots but often not the accompanying circumstances, which I nearly always can with 'street'. That always amazes me; I remember in context even stuff 44 years old often like this morning though I long ago forgot nearly everything else in my life at the time.</p>

<p>I heard that EVERY photographer worth his/her salt had such recall; am I wrong?</p>

<p>But I seldom, almost never remember new subjects' names until they become important for some other reason (perhaps they become a friend or famous or a repeat subject, etc.)</p>

<p>john<br /> John (Crosley)</p>

[Damon DAmato]

<blockquote>

<p>I heard that EVERY photographer worth his/her salt had such recall; am I wrong?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, you're wrong.<br>

<br /> damon<br /> Damon (D'Amato)</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I think John Crosley is likely mistaken about EVERY photographer worth his/her salt having such recall. However, I think the fact that John does have such recall would dispel any myths that a good street shooter would be so absorbed in what he was doing that he couldn't remember the shots. John is a good, experienced, and accomplished street shooter, and I sense he works more intuitively sometimes and more deliberately other times, and that even when he leans one way or the other, he utilizes both sides of his brain.</p>

<p>It would be a mistake to suggest that remembering one's photos or even recording (whether mentally or on paper) them is somehow counterproductive for intuitive street shooters, though it might be for some, especially those who can't multi-task well!</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>BTW, John, you're welcome for those Winogrand quotes. I think Winogrand really hit on something and describes something very important about photographs. Though I think there's a lot more to the story than he tells. Lots of other street shooters and non street shooters fill in lots of other blanks about how photography can work. Many photographers shoot for a lot of other reasons besides seeing what something looks like photographed. :-)</p>

[johncrosley]

<p>Fred G.<br /> <br />I really do construct in some form or another almost every worthwhile street shot I take.</p>

<p>If I see someone running by, I almost always shoot them. I try to understand and measure their stride, their speed, their movements, their actions, their motives, and their background as best I can, sometimes in almost microseconds, but even if I can't do more than get a little of that figured out or almost nothing, I shoot on the chance that I'll get something interesting and frequently do.</p>

<p>From the start, I found 'street' hot, sweaty, very, very hard work, as I was entirely doing all the figuring out in my brain -- from composition, the 'story', the exposure (with a match needle and applying 'exposure compensation with the aperture ring), focusing, and trying to capture moments that 'meant something' both visually and aesthetically, philosophically, or in some of a great variety of other manners. Whenever I could, I tried and still do, to make any photo into a composition.</p>

<p>I now know I had great influence from the great magazine photographers because I grew up reading those magazines. From Life, Colliers, Look through to decades of old National Geographics to name a few. What a treasure of a photo school -- my only one, ever.</p>

<p>In a sense my shooting hasn't changed much since the very start (see a photo from my first roll in my portfolio in its own folder).</p>

<p>You'll see under that photo a description of where and how I stood, and if I recall what I wrote underneath, how the ferry boat's shaking caused concern with the low shutter speed about whether that particular shot on the first roll would cause it to be too blurry (it wasn't).</p>

<p>I mostly gave up photography (there were relapses every decade or so) for over 30 years, and when I came back, it was to the same equipment but quickly I found matrix metering, autofocus (and learned how to use focus points to my advantage) 'C' drive (continuous servo 'motor drive' at six or so frames per second), [i used it somewhat before], and boy was I ever in heaven.</p>

<p>Those calculations that weighed me down and caused headaches, suddenly disappeared.</p>

<p>Maybe I just had time to digest the book I bought from Cartier-Bresson at his Exhibit in 1969 which stayed on my bedstead all those years, opened quite often, and analyzed, but often leaving me wondering 'why that shot?' What's so interesting about this particular shot, or that other one?</p>

<p>Now I've become comfortable that my equipment does more work; I do less and have more time to think ONLY about what it is I'm doing rather than those immense calculations to get focus and exposure right on, as it had become intuitive only when I was shooting heavily -- war, riots, etc., and then times of less activity meant far less skill in doing it all at once -- I'd lose my 'edge' with my eye and equipment and have to 'think' through everything anew, as I did when I first came here.</p>

<p>Suddenly, at about that time when I came here, I began to concentrate more on the content and producing LOTS more work, (not higher quality), I began to notice that I also understood more and more not only of those previously poorly understood works of Cartier-Bresson, but some of the more 'mysterious' work of other shooters as well. My horizons had broadened.</p>

<p>A wife had worked for 'Art in America', and early in our marriage, we had stacks of their publications in our apartments, (which I confess I barely understood), just lying around (she was an admin. assistant, not an art maven).</p>

<p>I think I absorbed a lot, and I've tried to apply my lifetime of absorbing knowledge AND images to my present work, and it's ever so much easier and more enjoyable now - it's FUN to go out shooting. No sweating; no headaches.</p>

<p>Now I look at HCB's images, and I can literally 'feel' and 'see' through his viewfinder and understood why and how he took almost every image I see, and I know almost all of them.</p>

<p>I live for taking photos now.</p>

<p>And in varying degrees, Fred G., as you noted, I use both hemispheres of my brain, often going from one shot to the next relying in one mostly on intuition (tempered by constructing rationally) to the next where I might rely primarily on rational construction, but maybe fire on intuition or instinct.<br>

<br /> It's a fun way to lead a life.</p>

<p>Don't show me any old shot and ask me its story or where I took it as a test. I have to see the surrounding shots for many of the old shots I didn't work on or analyze except for the day I shot them. I need more than one trigger sometimes.</p>

<p>Then it kicks in; I can literally retrace my steps even from decades past guided by silver halide or pixel images - literally an extension of my memory (and far less faulty).</p>

<p>It's amazing, as if those images are frozen and hidden memories, and seeing the images on paper, film or screen unfreezes that image in my memory.</p>

<p>Does it have something to do with having done all that figuring?</p>

<p>I don't know the answer; I am only in awe of this interesting ability.</p>

<p>That and $2 will get me an endless stack of pancakes at Denney's on their $2 Menu!</p>

<p>john</p>

<p>John (Crosley)</p>

[fi_rondo1]

<p>John, I have that facility with books as well as with most photographs I take... this has to do with a certain kind of memory (not so much with salt). I can touch any book I own and remember where I bought it, who gave it to me, who I was with, who I stole it from, etc... The photographs that I cannot remember are the ones I deleted when I used to shoot digital.</p>

<p>Fred, multi-tasking is a difficult thing for me. 25 years I tried to concentrate on more than one thing at a time and failed miserably. So now I stick to one thing at a time especially when I'm out taking pictures. Concentration is a board that threatens to be broken by a karate chop to the cerebrum. You can quote me on that even if I can't tell you exactly what I mean, but I'm sure someone out there will know exactly what I mean.</p>

<p>John... you hit upon the key word to all of this intellectual stuff, this gathering of knowledge and philosophies as though we're jealously squirreling away experience. And the word is FUN. The 2 to 4 hours I spend wandering around town are the best hours of the day (with or without results).</p>

[johncrosley]

<p>Fi Rondo,</p>

<p>and</p>

<p>Fred G.</p>

<p>Taking street photos may have you frozen to the core sometimes, with bitter winter wind whipping in your face, sometimes with Northwest humidity at about freezing, other times Continental humidity the temperature minus 10 to minus 30 degrees F., humidity at nearly 95%, driven by 40 mph winds -- and with most comfortable times occurring in Spring and Fall.</p>

<p>Unless you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or a few other places where it's Spring year round, the weather will get you, but then who wants to do 'Street' in San Jose, or many of the Bay Area metropolises in which no one is on the streets and everyone drives to the mall which is barred to photographers by overzealous security guards and 'mall policy', so if you shoot you're a trespasser and cops may be called because you're an offender.</p>

<p>In the summer you may be sweating, parched, soaked through your clothes and dripping with humidity hoping for several showers a day if you're lucky, the dye of your foreign purchased brightly colored shirt/blouse running into your other clothes, your body, even your camera straps.</p>

<p>But in the end, it's a way of life; you'll adapt because of that magic word - the one you so aptly noted Fi.</p>

<p>F U N</p>

<p>It's 'F U N' to see something no one has seen before, or especially find a relationship that you know will escape the attention of anyone on earth unless and until you capture it and save it for posterity.</p>

<p>If it's good enough that one moment may outlive you and enthrall future generations.</p>

<p>It's F U N to open your captures in your computer or look at your processed film, sometimes be surprised that those 'wonderful' captures you thought you made are just too simplistic, too obvious, too cliched, or otherwise wanting, and then turn to another, forgotten or overlooked capture and be stunned that you captured something 'magic' or 'wonderful' you hadn't thought you got, or the significance of which you failed to recognize, as you shot so much. </p>

<p>I keep doing new things, making new captures, mixing it up with new techniques, to keep it interesting and to capture what my ever expanding vision 'sees'.</p>

<p>F U N as a way of life.</p>

<p>I vote for that any day.</p>

<p>I have a tough time getting around often, but this F U N stuff helps kill pain, even when it would almost kill an ordinary person or even me if I weren't so absorbed in what I'm doing, creating those images, some of which I hope stand a chance of being wonderful, and possibly being my heritage.</p>

<p>Long ago for decades as an attorney, I did work that (among other things and in small part of what I did) put food on the table every night, paid the rent or mortgage, and paid all expenses for a hundred or more families for the rest of their lifetimes, and that was 'satisfying', but those clients (except rarely) figured, 'that's what I paid him (handsomely) for.'</p>

<p>That was interesting W O R K, absorbing and rewarding.</p>

<p>It will never be my heritage. </p>

<p>If an attorney finds an unusual angle for a sure loser case or claim or finds one completely overlooked by his brightest colleagues, and the case wins and wins large, he was 'just doing his job'. </p>

<p>If a case loses, 'my attorney sold me down the river'. I heard that over and over about people who lost cases represented by other attorneys. I practiced like I shoot, sometimes audaciously,with empathy usually, often very interestingly and definitely 'my own way' and not by any book, generally, though solidly based in basics, and for the most part it was successful beyond my dreams but it was huge, draining, life destroying W O R K and not F U N in any sense as I know it now.</p>

<p>Totally, completely, absorbing?</p>

<p>YES. </p>

<p>F U N? </p>

<p>NO. NEVER. </p>

<p>People hate attorneys (until they need a good one and only so long as they need him/her.)</p>

<p>Photography on the street is a F U N way of life.</p>

<p>People who see you may hate you at first, and if you're successful at winning them over, the next time they see you from afar, they may call out your name or rub up against you, like poor people do to millionaires, hoping good stuff will somehow rub off.</p>

<p>Everything you do and learn in your lifetime often can be brought to bear in a week's to a year's shooting. </p>

<p>You can draw from any discipline, and that knowledge often can help make you a better street shooter, even if that knowledge just helps you talk easily with potential subjects or understand their way of life or actions better. </p>

<p>It also can help you recognize themes others might easily overlook. See ironies others might never understand. Identify relationships that escape everybody but you the photographer that instant and which if captured well, can be captivating.<br>

<br />It can make you feel like a 'seer' because sometimes you can predict and anticipate suvbjects' actions before the actions even occur to them, based on observing them, all parsed through your vast database of human behavior and experience under various circumstances. You KNOW what they might do BEFORE they do it, and what they do is spontaneous, but you knew they'd do it, and placed yourself accordingly for the capture, camera properly adjusted.</p>

<p>F U N is why we all should be here.</p>

<p>Unless we're pros, in which case, the F U N may be turning into W O R K.</p>

<p>Horrors!</p>

<p>john<br>

John (Crosley)</p>

<p>I quit the practice of law in the late '80s after two decades, victim of burnout, and haven't looked back. Most of my contemporaries I run into who stayed in practice have expressed envy. I'm older, yet my friends and often my subjects are surprised to find my true age, though it's obvious I'm 'older' especially if they they talk or interact with me, and then many decide they'll invite me into their 'group' wherever that might be in the world. They instinctively feel in me mostly my 'F U N of photographing them - of capturing their lives in interesting ways and my overweening joy when I succeed, because when I can I share good results with my subjects or anyone else who's interested.</p>

<p>jc<br>

I hope you don't mind if this is © 2011; I'm writing something. All rights reserved, John Crosley</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>John and Fi,</p>

<p>Thanks for your thoughts. Now we're getting into something a little heavier, I suppose. Remembering not just the shots you took but how you felt at the time of shooting. I hope it's not too much of a dalliance.</p>

<p>For me, photography can be fun but isn't always.</p>

<p>There's an addictive side to it that carries quite a bit of weight and goes beyond fun. There's also an expressive side and a cathartic side that aren't always fun. I've looked at things and dealt with emotions while doing photography that are dead serious, that sometimes I'd rather not deal with. Photography can be a purging activity for me. Some things beside fun that I can think of to describe how photography and photographs are for me are: risk, curiosity, challenge, dread sometimes. I find a lot of voyeurism and exhibitionism in the photography I do and those can have fun and even titillating aspects but also have a lot of discomfort to them. I am drawn to working with my own discomfort and putting that into my photographs. I have photographed sadness, which hasn't been particularly fun.</p>

<p>I sense that good street photographers, you guys included, don't always have fun on the streets. If you are truly empathizing with some of your surroundings and the people you shoot, I would think fun would keep you emotionally distanced and empathy would allow for much less than fun in many situations. I don't do that much street shooting, but some of the places and situations it takes me and some of the people I get to know through it, allow me a lot of things but fun isn't one of them.</p>

<p>I've done more documentary than street work and some of it is great fun but those same assignments can have much more serious sides to them. I've cried while photographing, or at least have had to hold back my tears. In some cases, I've had to put my camera down for a minute or two because the emotions of the minute were too overwhelming to bring my camera up to my eye. I've had to stay more present than that. And I've had to put that emotion, later, into some of the shooting I do.</p>

[fi_rondo1]

<p>Fred, good points... FUN can also be thought of as another way of having an adventure; as in a venture into the unknown. The uncharted territories, as you know, aren't always physical. I don't get all that emotional when I'm out shooting, it doesn't mean that I'm cold to what's out there, but I maintain a certain reserve (my temperament, I guess) that reminds me of Yeats' lines:</p>

<p>Cast a cold on eye / on life, on death / horseman pass by</p>

<p>The phenomenon of shooting in public is such that if I happen to be in a terrible mood, chances are I'll find terrible things to photograph. But the adventure of being out there is fun. It's a Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn type of thing. A little fun, a lot of mischief, and just enjoying the experience (whether you have anything to show for it by the end of the day or not)...</p>

<p>John, I fully agree with you:</p>

<p>"You can draw from any discipline, and that knowledge often can help make you a better street shooter..."</p>

<p>Maybe the subtlety of thought better prepares you to perceive the subtlety of gesture or expression or atmosphere... and when it does, these are pictures that I anticipate rather than remember (even if these anticipatory pictures fall flat more often than others...)...</p>

<p> </p>

[Brad_]

For me it's neither fun nor work. It's energizing and about feeling alive.

 

I concentrate on a single area in San Francisco and see that focus continuing for quite awhile - it feels limitless. There's always more to

explore going deeper. I remember every shot and every person engaged; name and circumstances included. It's more

documentary and engagement, though I still shoot "street" the neighborhood to fill gaps in the story. Also,

people remember me running into them on future outings. For me that's most gratifying; a form of acceptance.

[ray .]

<i>"I think the fact that John does have such recall would dispel any myths that a good street shooter

would be so absorbed in what he was doing that he couldn't remember the shots.</i><p>Did someone

somewhere suggest that, Fred? If so I may have missed it. ;)

[indraneel]

<p>A lot of text accumulated once more!</p>

<p>I did like the videos where HCB holds up the images and speaks about them...</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>Did someone somewhere suggest that, Fred?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Not in this thread. I was thinking of some other forums and threads and outside conversationswhere folks have suggested that thought and memory could get in the way of their shooting. It was purely my own formulation based on things I've heard and how I was personally approaching the question.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>A lot of text accumulated once more!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, Indraneel, I think some photographers have things they want to say and discuss. They don't limit themselves to pictures.</p>

[johncrosley]

<p>Street photographers often are a rare subset of photographer.</p>

<p>I suggest most often it takes a certain kind of intelligence to do 'street' well.</p>

<p>Long ago on this service I posited that 'street' was 'thinking man's photography'.</p>

<p>In a way that photography might be compared to chess, 'street photography' is like those people in the park, moving their chess pieces then slamming their hand on the chess clock timer -- speed often matters and speed of thought often is critical in street just as speed is in speed chess.</p>

<p>It's not only how deep you think and feel, but often how quickly you can put it together to recognize the scene and capture it at once, all before the scene deconstructs -- sometimes all within a second or two.</p>

<p>It's our own personal race against that chess clock, except we have no opponent except ourselves and our personal pride in doing well what we do, then to take home occasionally those defining prize shots that may outlive us.</p>

<p>Cartier-Bresson started out as a big game hunter, and for him photographic life morphed into the living and the capturing, not just the creatimg and viewing of his work. He was a supreme artist but also he was so much more. He lived the life.</p>

<p>He lived for the experience. He went for years in the Far East sending his film off undeveloped, not knowing what the images on it would look like printed and claiming not really to have cared (for sure somewhat of a lie).</p>

<p>For him photography was his 'art' but it was also an experiential art that he lived day to day from before the war, during times as an escaped prisoner when he photographed a little, the Liberation, then when the world was emerging from chaos and changing after World War II as he moved around the hot spots of the post colonial Far East.</p>

<p>As he said later, he was always that escaped WWII prisoner on the run, at home nowhere (until his later years when he just gave up photography, I think, remarried, and had a child).</p>

<p>In a sense we've all got a bit of the game hunter in us -- at least I do. I really do want those trophy photos, if only to look at and share, yet there is not one photo on my walls (how would I choose?)</p>

<p>Long ago I agonized about 'intruding' in people's lives and was very sensitive; I even became morose over it; since I had no audience to remind me I was making art.</p>

<p>It somehow just felt narcissistic to me, since no one kept company with me who could remind me what I was producing was true 'art' (as now is recognized). I fell away from 'street' in part because of that sensitivity.</p>

<p>The group recognition that photography, and even good 'street' photography can be 'art' is one of the strengths of this community and in part why I write so much - mostly for newcomers with 'street angst.'</p>

<p>I want newcomers to know how to cope with those feelings of dread and fear, and share with them their feelings of anxiety over 'intruding' in other people's lives.</p>

<p>For many Americans and Europeans and maybe more, it's somehow unnatural and embarrassing to point a camera at a stranger at first until one sees the results in perspective then reviews the strength and beauty of the captures against historical images and realize that today we produce the historical images for tomorrow's generations.</p>

<p>We today make the photographic history for tomorrow.</p>

<p>What's on TV and movies is just a chimera of game shows, crime shows, and other ratings and box office magnets.</p>

<p>We probably get as close or closer to reality than any of that, and for that, what we do can have potentially great historical and artistic importance.</p>

<p>With the intelligence that so often accompanies the 'street' photographer so often comes the articulateness that drives other forms of expression -- many good street artists often are pretty talented in expressing themselves verbally too which is why I think, Indraneel, this forum has so much written expression. Street photographers I think are by their nature those who like to explain, and some can do well in more than one medium.</p>

<p>john<br /> John (Crosley)</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I think street photography has many different characteristics from other types of photography. You've nicely described some of them, using some descriptive analogies, such as the chess player.</p>

<p>I think it takes a lot of balls and hubris to claim street photographers are any more "thinking men" than other photographers on the whole and the same kind of self aggrandizement to claim that you have any more potential hisotorical or artistic importance than other types of photographers or many, many other people of various professions, hobbies, and activities.</p>

<p>Artists and all of us have to live with blurred lines and unclear morality. It may be that you are both an intruder AND an artist. I know I am. Art goes hand in hand with some negative or at least questionable stuff. If you intrude and make art, you intrude and make art. The art doesn't negate your intrusions, though it may justify them. Artists live with those tensions all the time. It often drives them to drink and more.</p>

[Brad_]

>>> I think it takes a lot of balls and hubris to claim street photographers are any more "thinking men"

than other photographers ...

 

That made me cringe as well. It's a simple endeavor. For me it's about being aware, having a good

amount of curiosity, liking people a lot, and the desire to create a photograph of a moment in time.

 

>>> Street photographers I think are by their nature those who like to explain, and some can do well in

more than one medium.

 

That's not my experience from knowing a lot of street photogs; other than when asked. Rather, they're

pretty unassuming and quiet. Not the type to talk about their achievements.

[indraneel]

<blockquote>

<p>many good street artists often are pretty talented in expressing themselves verbally too</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Not the impression I got from the HCB interview...</p>

<p>It's one thing to be able to (de/re)-construct photographs with logic, something else entirely to express it in terms of an alternate grammar. Conscious and intuitive logic are two different things entirely and are often domain specific. A person is either able to transfer this across domains or not, there is usually no middle ground, and this is not restricted to particular fields of work. The best indicator of whether a person is talented in different fields is being talented in different fields, not extreme talent in any particular field (as research regarding the 10K hour rule and such indicates).</p>

<p>Social success does however require some level of talent of verbal expression due to (most) mammalian society's inordinate reliance on verbal communication. Again, this is domain specific for nearly all individuals. How often do you compose text using the same rules that you would for an image (e.g. contrast, leading words, polarity, semantic strength...)? Not every street photographer is a Tolkien, or worse, Wittgenstein.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>"semantic strength"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Very interesting. How many (street) photographers' work shows semantic strength. I wish more did! Pictures are often incoherent, taken "just because" and a lot of that gets really boring really fast.</p>

[ray .]

Very true, Fred. But also sort of a meaningless statement. It's pretty obvious. There is bad work in any genre. What else is

new?!

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Ray, it's only meaningless if you don't see it within the context of it being a response to Indraneel. The discussion, at the moment, is about the comparative strengths of the communicative viability of text and photographs. He asks about the relative use of various attributes in text and in photographs. I answered that I wished more photographs showed such semantic strength. I put (street) in parantheses because I didn't want to single street photography out as being often incoherent. But I don't think it's at all a meaningless point to suggest that most photographs are incoherent. As a matter of fact, it should be engraved on the submission page for critiques. If it were so <em>obvious</em>, we'd have a lot of better photographs, ones that have a reason for existence other than "because I can."</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Actually, I should amend that a little.</p>

<p>The street forum is unusual in that it is one of few genres that gets its own forum which often has photos posted and has its own No Words aspect as well. So it's hard not to notice a lot of patting on the back and the posting of bad photos as examples of themes and as part of a photographic dialogue. I think there are some unique characteristics that are strictly related to street, as John points out. And some of those differences, particularly the aspects of candidness and spontaneity, may have to do with such an overwhelming amount of pointless and bad photographs. If a serious and non-defensive discussion about that could actually take place, it could be used as a learning tool and perhaps a little more depth could be achieved in the photos routinely posted to these threads. My experience has been that any time that's suggested, often by some regular posters to this forum, the defensiveness level is high and a willingness to seriously take a look at the photographic pitfalls that street photographers so easily fall into is absent.</p>

<p>I routinely talk with other portrait photographers about the traps of doing portraits and ways to avoid superficiality, redundancy, and inarticulateness. As many "cool photos" as I hear here, and as many criticisms of composition, contrast, blown highlights, etc. as I hear here, I don't here much specific and meaningful discussion about purpose, communication, expression, and articulation. That's why this discussion itself stands out.</p>

<p>Ray, you started the discussion, and for that you should be complimented, but your only responses so far have been defensive rather than penetrating.</p>

[ray .]

Fred, it's your discussion now, including John Crosley's life story. Sorry, I have very little interest in it as it's turned, which

was also the case recently with your bizarre comparison of photography on the street to reality television.