Why Pro Photographers Have a Timeless Eye

Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod Massachusetts

   Haste Makes Waste. Snapping away, shooting without seeing, we can make hundreds of images, and then quickly dump them on our hard drives. Later, we delete most of them, when the Waste Dump pile becomes too high.

   However, I have good news. There is an antidote, a Timeless Eye. Let's discover the timeless eye and the Fab Four of Photography.

Stream, Colorado

 

   Imagine each photo is the last one you will make. Photograph it as if your image is the most important one you'll ever take. Stick with the process of making it until you feel the flow.  

   Skillful photographers never run out of time. They live by the motto:  “Photograph as if you will die tonight, yet craft each image as if you have all eternity.” The photographer David Duchemin calls this approach: work fast to work slow. In your photography, "make haste slowly" or "Festina Lente" as the Roman Emperor Agustus said."

   Compose that "last" image with care. When you are completely in the flow, your gear will have faded out of your awareness.

   As you photography, be aware of the Fab Four of Photography.

The Fabulous Four: 

THE THING  

   Instead of the subject itself, make light your subject. When you go out to shoot, even when your are in the worst possible location with terrible light, use your imagination and embrace the challenge of finding a compelling image.

Vero Beach, Florida

   The fact of a picture is a different thing than the reality itself. The subject and the picture are not the same thing. Your attention to the thing you photograph is the secret. Stare, absorb, and wait patiently until that thing engulfs, transforms and is breathed into your imagination.

Hog Cay, Jumentos, Bahamas

THE FRAME

    Composition is all. Our framing creates shapes in our image. If the edges are too lively, they pull us away from the subject. We must balance the edges of the picture frame. Make them alive, but not too lively or too light. Harmony between the edges of the frame and the subject of the image will make a compelling photograph. Slow down until you get the Aha sense in your frame.

Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island Fisherman

THE DETAIL
   Photographs isolate fragments. They document these fragments. The purpose of the details in a photograph is not to make a story clear, but to make it real.

TIMELESSNESS
   Seek the timeless eye of slow photography. All photographs are time exposures of the present. A myth of Slow Photograph is that it concerns long time exposures. It does not. It is about the subjective experience of timelessness.

   When we see master works of painting, sculpture or photograph, they often embody all Fabulous Four elements.

Port Mouton Nova Scotia

   So, practice mindfully slowing down. Think carefully about your subject. Bob and weave around it like a boxer. Stare at it until details like texture and light enter your awareness. Think carefully about your framing. Keep the edges of your frame alive and vibrant. Feel timelessness in your work.