Slow Photography Secrets

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Shhh . . .here are a couple Slow Photography Secrets.




1. How You Think

Slow Photography is NOT something you do with only your thumb, or your finger. It's NOT about time exposures, filters, or water blurs.

It IS about how you think, using your brain and visual system, to care about every frame. It takes a curious blend of curiosity, faith, imagination and patience.




2. Three E's

What makes a Slow Photographer is taking time to experiment, explore, and enquire about how the image could be better.


3. Thoughtful Moves, not Sluggish Ones.

You can move quickly when you do Slow Photography. That's right. It's a well kept secret. Slow Photography is not about how fast you move. It is your deliberate, mindful awareness of how you make photographs.





4. Caring:  Environment, Safety, Ethics

If you are moving slowly towards a grizzly bear in a national park, snapping away, after signing the park rules against getting within 100 yards of a wild bear, that's not Slow Photography. That's putting yourself and the animal in harm's way. Slow Photographers care about the people and animals around them, their environment and about safety. They dispose of darkroom chemicals wisely. They develop ethics for photographing people and wildlife that do no harm to their subjects, or themselves.



5. Rebellion and The Spirit

The Slow Photography Rebellion is a rebellion against the meme of faster and faster ways of working with images. It promotes a lasting passion for photography, for your entire lifetime. Its goal is quality photography, not quantity.

Slow Photographers can invite and receive a photograph. We do not have to chase it down like hunters. As Minor White said "No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen."

6. The One You Always Have With You 

Slow Photography is a state of mind, done with the camera you are carrying now.






Best Slow Photography Links:


1. Daguerreotype: Daniel Carillo's Blog (2013)
http://www.core77.com/blog/photography/slow_photography_dan_carillos_daguerreotypes_24803.asp

2. Welcome to the Slow Photography Rebellion, Jim Austin (2012)
http://filmphotographyproject.com/content/features/2012/10/spr-slow-photography-rebellion


3. Tim Wu's piece on the Slow Photography Movement  (2011)
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/obsessions/2011/01/the_slowphotography_movement.html


4. Fred Conrad's New York Times article Slow Photography in an Instantaneous Age (2009)
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/essay-slow-photography-in-an-instantaneous-age/


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