Slow Photography #59 : Visual Pushups and the Real Reasons Why We Shoot Daily

-
VISUAL PUSHUPS

Visual push-ups is a current photography buzzword, yet most of today's thinking about visual push-ups is wrong. The central idea is attention and alertness, not self satisfaction.

 Two vital reasons exist for daily photography practice. We become more confident and alert to the world outside us. Beginning pianists play with one finger, advanced players use all ten. Daily practice stretches all our tech and art photo skills: exposure, composition, etc.


PRACTICE OUT OF SIGHT


 The idea of pleasing your self, or sharing every day something you shot, has nothing to do with visual push-ups. Shooting daily is not about making keepers. We do photography daily to stay fit, to practice like musicians do, and to make our gear second nature. Perhaps we should aspire to join those concert musicians who practice for days, months and years without sharing their art,  as they wait to share their best efforts to a spellbound audience.   

"SPIDER LIGHT", Edenton North Carolina.



"COBBLE HOME" Nantucket, Massachusetts. 

"Mono Lines" Provincetown, Massachusetts. 

"How Pelicans Go Blind"  Georgia, USA.

 
"DREAMS":  On the street in NYC.

Visual push-ups help our thought process. As photographers, when we don't shoot enough, we are more excited about what we shoot, and get more emotional about it. 

“Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good” – Garry Winogrand

 

THOUGHTFUL PHOTOGRAPHY

Visual push-ups help us become more thoughtful about our work. We want our brain to guide us. Shooting daily helps dampen our misguided emotions that our work is good. If it is good, you will want to look at it, and so will others, a year after you took it. It takes time, and curating of our own work to make memorable images. 

    Feel free to comment, and constructive criticism is always welcome too. Thanks for your visit ! Jim

 

Jimages.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slow Photography #83 Exploring the Shrimp Hole

-
Image
GETTING THERE: After sailing to Long Island, Bahamas in February 2018, we rowed our dinghy .4 miles (650 meters) east from the anchorage to a sponge fisherman's area ashore at Gray's Bight settlement, Long Island. First called Yuma by the Arawaks, and later named Fernandina by Columbus, Long Island is 180 miles southeast of Nassau.  Explore the Shrimp Hole and see the shrimp bodies reflected by the undersurface, an experience like floating in space, in this video:                 Play   Video "Exploring the Shrimp Hole, A Salty Paws Adventure" THE SHRIMP HOLE: We'd been previously to Long Island's famous Deans Blue Hole, one of the world's deepest at 663 feet. However, swimming in the shrimp hole was surreal. To get there, you can drive South from Thompson Bay. Since we were anchored, we landed a dinghy and took a short walk across the Queen's Highway and through the grounds of Saint Mary's Spanish c...
Read more

Slow Photography #84: Serve and Return ~Jimmy Connors and Fast Kodak Film

-
Image
Caught on Film: Jimmy Connors returns serve to Stan Smith .  Kodak has been a vital and important part of photography all my life. So, it was a thrill to learn this week's news that Kodak Alaris is bringing back T-Max Professional P-3200/TMZ film is coming back, March 2018 in 36 exposure rolls, after being discontinued 5 years ago. Film is Kodak's heritage. Tennis is my heritage, but at the other end of the racket. I started playing amateur tennis when I was 9, but the pros, including Connors, were heroes who lived on another planet, visible through the distant telescope of TV. I craved a Wilson T2000 racket so I could hit as hard as Jimmy. Now, I had the chance to cross over, and see bad boy Jimmy Connors up close. For 160 consecutive weeks, he ranked #1 in the world and when played in Denver, Colorado my senior year in high school, he was the men's singles champion of the Denver Open for the 3rd year. At the time, playing for the Manual High School tennis tea...
Read more

Slow Photography #66 Temporal Intelligence: The Power of Patience

-
Image
The spider is a timeless symbol of patience and persistence.  I watched a spider at work.  It did not complain when wind, rain and time undid its creations; its effort to repair a beautiful, practical web design was deliberate and skillful. When it's web was damaged, it patiently rebuilt, and waited for the flies. Its actions were powerful. As photographers, we might take a strand from the spider's web. Why? Because patience is not only powerful, but a lifelong spiritual reward and a path to find emotional freedom.  "Patience doesn’t mean passivity or resignation, but power. It’s an emotionally freeing practice of waiting, watching, and knowing when to act. " ~Judith Orloff  Slow photography is patient. It means waiting, watching and knowing when to act. It spreads where ever there are photographers who challenge the mindless. Slow photographers discover the power of patience because they care about their craft. The inherent pleasure of delibe...
Read more